First Drive Review
Years ago, in a time before laptops and nipple piercings, Subaru built a puzzling truck thing called the BRAT. It was like a baby El Camino with two backward-facing plastic lawn chairs bolted in the bed that were meant to carry adventurous passengers or your friends who maybe had ingested a whole lot of "additives" and demanded to be driven around at high speed while they were peaking. This seating arrangement sounds insanely lawsuit-prone for the modern age, but trust us, back then when kids were given sniper rifles, dirt bikes, and switchblades for graduating from Mommy and Me Preschool, nobody paid any attention to this decapitation-waiting-to-happen seating arrangement. In fact, nobody paid any attention to the BRAT at all.
Fast-forward a couple of decades. The world is kinder and gentler. And so is the BRAT concept.
What is this thing, exactly?
It's an Outback station wagon with a pickup bed growing out behind the rear seats. It's been styled, designed, and massaged to appeal to a new generation of adventure seekers -- those who pursue the climbing of mountains as opposed to the dropping of acid, those who achieve a deep tan from days on Half Dome as opposed to those who got second-degree burns from passing out at a Fugs concert in Oneonta because their friend "Mustang" Charlie Gutterman told them they were popping 10-milligram Seconals when in fact they were 30s.
The Baja is the vehicle for the modern quasi-suicidal adventurer of the body and spirit -- the extreme-sports enthusiast who frolics on sheer cliffs, surfs tsunamis, and bicycles down the side of the Sears Tower. It's named after a place that's very hot and doesn't work very well. But unlike its namesake, the Subaru Baja does work very well indeed.
In fact, it works so well you could use it as a regular everyday sedan and never even bother with the pickup bed and adventure gear. The ride quality is cushy, even on dirt and gravel. The steering is precise, linear, and responsive. The handling is adequate for most road work and is actually fun. If you want real thrills, however, stick to rock climbing, as the only available engine is the 165-hp, 2.5-liter flat-four, mated to either a manual or automatic transmission.
What's notable about a vehicle aimed at fans of dirt and rocks is the extremely high content level. As standard equipment, you get a power sunroof, leather seating, an 80-watt CD stereo, and a six-way power driver's seat. Like all Subies sold in the U.S., the Baja has full-time all-wheel drive. But that and butch off-roady graphics do not a mountain climber make. The longer pickup bed and aggressive front fascia reduce the Outback's already marginal approach and departure angles, making the Baja even less able to claw its way to a place where the EMTs can only reach you by chopper.
Because modern recreation requires mountains of gear, Baja designers created a bed pass-through they call the Switchback. Flip the seat cushions forward, fold the backrests down, and a pass-through door folds flat so you can slide in surfboards, skis, or your comatose friend who fell off the cliff after yelling, "Hey, watch this!"
For really long items (or tall trauma victims), you can drive with the tailgate lowered. To keep the cops happy, the license-plate bracket is hinged so you can flip the plate down and stay legal. A nice touch. A cage-type bed extender keeps cargo from falling out the back. Our initial drive occupied a narrow part of the preview spectrum -- sunny day, warm weather, smooth roads, free lunch. Under those conditions, every car is at its best. So the small quirks and shortcomings that might appear under adverse conditions just didn't make an appearance. We can infer, however, that after a few hours on the road with an open pass-through door, the throb of highway noise might get annoying. And if it's very hot or very cold, no climate system in the world can keep up with the loss of air being sucked out that same door. So if skiing is your destination, it's probably wise to find a rack that will attach to the Baja's standard roof rails, and we expect that Subaru, and the aftermarket, will soon be pumping out all sorts of add-on goodies.
As the pictures demonstrate, the Baja, like the BRAT, is small. It has a ground clearance of 7.3 inches, a towing capacity of 2400 pounds, and a pickup bed that is only 41.5 inches long.
The BRAT was a vehicle easily dismissed. Its market niche was narrower than Buddy Holly's tie, and it was so quirky that even the stalwart Subaru fans who embrace the unusual found it hard to love. But maybe we were all wrong back then. Maybe Subaru wasn't out of step; it was we who were behind the curve. And it's only now that the world has caught up with Subaru. Scary thought, ain't it?
Subaru is convinced that at least 2000 risk takers per month will find the concept of this crossover compelling enough to plunk down a deposit. At press time, there was no definite word on how deep into their pockets those people would have to reach. But given Subaru's history in that area, it will probably be less painful than, say, a spinal fracture or a shark bite.
