Number of Turbo Brats made in 1983 & 84 ? And how many for US market?
I don’t know the number but will say that is has to be very, very small. I started working for Subaru about 1980 and through the 90s. I’ve seen one Turbo Brat in the entire time.
Less than 100,000 over its entire production run. Haven’t seen a breakdown by year.
A simple web search will get most of the info the OP wants someone to do for them . I did just to kill time and easily found a chart showing production by years and also if I wanted to know the number of Turbo sold I would contact Subaru USA.
Those were extreme niche vehicles that sold very poorly.
Volvo is right that your question can be answered with a simple google search, but whatever it is the numbers are small.
But I’m curious; what was the reason for the question? Are you thinking of buying one?
Under a 100k production run for all years but only a tiny fraction of that number was turbocharged. Matter of fact, my fuzzy memory doesn’t even remember a turbo being offered in 1983. It was a 1984 option only.
The early Brats were somewhat crude and prone to transmission issues due to running out of gear oil because of a poorly designed shifter shaft seal setup. The last Brats were kind of neat. A friend of mine owned 3 of the early models.
My fuzzy memory also seems to recall an issue with the Feds and those 2 jump seats (a.k.a. Death Wish) in the bed.
My recollection is that Subaru paid-off somebody in the US Department of Commerce in order to approve their sale in this country, and once that was discovered, the plug was pulled on their sale.
But… I’m still not sure if we are supposed to be discussing the Brat. The title of the post clearly states “Subaru Baja”, but–then again–the Baja model wasn’t put on the market until 2003.
Again, my memory is hazy as this is ancient history but I think Subaru got around certain Federal statutes because the Brat was considered (and noted on the VIN door tag) as an MPV; or Multi Purpose Vehicle.
This meant it was an off-road vehicle exempt from certain regulations pertaining to most street legal cars. Sort of a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.
I remember my first thought when I saw my first Brat many years ago. What kind of moron would ride in the back of this thing.
I know that through working for 3 different Subaru dealers over the years I’ve only seen one turbo charged Brat (new or used) the entire time and even that one was a regional office to dealer transfer.
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