I’d seen, but most of all heard this Justy that suddenly appeared around my part of town a couple of weeks earlier. And then I caught up with it across the street from some of my rentals, and even talked to the owner. There was a time when these were very common in Eugene; they really fit in with a certain segment of the population here, for whom a Subaru Loyale or Legacy was just way too big and extravagant. But they seem to all pretty much have gone the way of so many other artifacts of their time, the late 80s and early 90s. I wouldn’t be surprised if some ended up as chicken houses in the back yard.
But this one is in the hands of a young guy, who picked it cheap recently, and drives it like he stole it. Of course, given the Justy’s little 67 hp three-pot engine, that’s almost mandatory.
The Justy had two great claims to fame: it was the only car in its class that was available in 4WD, which is of course what has endeared it to its loving (and abusive) owners. As we can see, its off-rad capabilities have already been utlized by its new owner. Undoubtedly, that was what motivated him to buy it.
And it says so quite proudly on its back deck.
The drive to the independently suspended rear wheels was initiated by pushing a button embedded into the top of the shift lever.
There it is, the red button. As long as the Justy was pointed straight ahead, it could be actuated at pretty much any speed. Which invariably wasn’t all too high anyway.
Here’s the little 1.2 liter three cylinder. No, not all Subaru engines were boxers. And it had a balance shaft, so good vibrations were in its repertoire. And here’s another neat thing, that I only found out thanks to a comment left at one of our Just CCs (links below): the water pump is inside the engine, driven off that balance shaft, down below the crankshaft. Benefits? Sure. No pulley bearings to wear out, which inevitably is what wears out first. And it was undoubtedly well-lubricated.
And that other great claim to fame? The Justy was the first car available in the US with a CVT! Up to that point, only DAF offered one in Europe, and theirs was a rubber-belt affair. The Justy’s CVT was the forerunner of all modern CVTs, with a steel “belt” and all encased in a compact unit. Needless to say, its rep was a bit less than stellar, in terms of its feel, sound, and performance. I don’t know about its longevity, but the Justys I’ve still seen around in recent years seem to all be stick shifts.
It’ll be interesting to see how long this one keeps going; somehow I’m not too optimistic, given its current owner. But who knows?
But I’m not quite convinced this is the last one left in town, which justifies the question mark in the headline. Somewhere in Eugene, there’s probably an old hippie-grandma with white braids that still has her well-loved Justy, if she hasn’t yet replaced it with a Prius. What else would one replace a Justy with? There’s just nothing like it anymore.
More Justy reading:
David Saunder’s Justy CC (a serious look at the Justy)
My Justy CC: a decidedly less serious look at the Justy, titled: “The Mother Earth Newsmobile”
My neighbor has one, an automatic in great shape. He added a four gauge pack mounted on the dash
I wonder if a Japanese exec without a strong knowledge of English named this car.
A buddy of mine had one, and the running joke was that it was “Justy-nuff” car to get you where you were going.
Here’s one local to me in Central Florida for $1k. I can imagine this slightly lifted with some BF Goodrich All-Terrain T/A’s filling the wheel wells. I went the other direction on my Subaru Legacy and it sits low on summer compound tires.
https://tampa.craigslist.org/hil/cto/6073658080.html
Always wondered why Subaru opted for Inline-3 instead of Flat-4 engines for the Justy.
Size and packaging. The smallest EJ series flat 4 made was 1.5 liters, and the Justy was a small, narrow car. A transverse 3 cylinder with transaxle is probably about the same width as a small flat 4 and much, much shallower, fitting entirely ahead of the firewall, saving interior space. Plus, they already had 2 cylinder Kei car engines available to upsize for the Justy, rather than downsizing a flat 4 that wouldn’t package as well.
The last one of these I saw, I saw about 12 years ago when I was still living in Memphis. In my experience, the majority of the Justys ( Justies?) imported to the U.S. appear to have been 4 doors with automatic transmissions. This one, therefore, is a rare example of a really rare car.
I almost live close enough to Tampa to make the one referenced by PSYM interesting. Luckily(?), I’m at an age where trying to squeeze through the driver’s door of a small 4 door sedan isn’t something I’d want to do…even only occasionally.
Lotus Rebel, considering the size of the car, do you really have to ask? And they had to “squeeze” the water pump into the engine block as it was.
One of my friends had one of these, albeit with 2WD only. It was a second car for the couple, and once he had enough, he traded up…considerably, to a Lincoln Town Car. I believe his daughter got the Justy as it was not worth trading to the dealer. My memories of it was that it was buzzy, cheap, but screwed together fairly well for such an entry level car. That was where the Japanese really made their mark – putting out cheap cars that were still pretty good quality for price. It led to a lot of young drivers being brand loyal as their purchasing power increased.
Don’t forget the Justy’s claim to infamy as the last car sold in the US with a carburetor. Hooniverse actually has a project car series on a Justy the link is the most recent post where it fires up after a long search for hard to find parts
http://hooniverse.com/2017/02/06/justy-little-project-car-firing-it-up-and-justy-few-videos/
I bought one in 1996 for $500. It had been sitting for about a year, and the people just wanted it gone, but it came with a thick stack of maintenance records … on the second morning I had it, on my way to work, there was a giant cloud of steam and the engine quit. I had it towed to the dealer’s shop, got a soul-wrinkling quote for head gasket replacement and a ride to work. A few hours later got a call: the head itself had disintegrated! Mr. Perfect Maintenance had left the same antifreeze in an alloy engine for several years …
I had it towed from the shop to my son’s house, which had a carport he wasn’t using, and did one of my first Internet searches to find a new or used head. I did, for $99 from a guy in Wisconsin, “needs rebuild”. My buddy Racer Bob looked it over and gave me a shopping list for gaskets, studs etcetera, which I brought to him on Monday morning. Tuesday morning he called for me to come get it; he had rebuilt it on his kitchen counter while watching Monday Night Football. Son and I had a lovely time putting most of it back together, since the spilled coolant had to be cleared out too – this let us see what an ingenious little mill this was – and then Bob came over to help me get it running.
Which it did very nicely indeed. That engine was rated at 72 hp, most interesting to me because my other car, a ’60 Falcon, had an engine with exactly twice the number of cylinders and twice the displacement, 2.4 liters … but only 18 more quoted hp! Mine was 2WD with a 4-speed, and was a lively, cheerful little car with a nice growly exhaust note. When the outfit I worked for was shut down by the parent company, an underwear maker in Bowling Green, KY, we were given a little over a month to wind down our Internet project at the home office, which meant a 65 mile daily commute. The Justy managed to do it almost every day in 45 minutes door to door despite the long climb up to Kentucky’s plateau from the Nashville basin. Not only that, I was getting enough in daily mileage money to fill the thing up many times over!
I gave it to my son before we moved out to SoCal, and he ran it until his mechanic, a guy who could fix anything that was fixable, bluntly told him that he needed to find something else. It was of course that damned “electric” carburetor, as noted above. Had the car not been subject to emissions testing I’m sure a workaround would have been possible …
There was a 10K mile Justy at the Portland Swap Meet earlier this month, but I do not have any photos to show
I always thought these were clever cars when they introduced the ECVT and 4WD options. Leave it to Subaru to market a supermini for all seasons. I also thought the styling was fairly good for a car in that class of the day. My enthusiasm waned substantially after a neighborhood kid’s parents bought him a 92? ECVT 4WD 5 door that was only a couple years old. They got it for him because he was on the ski team, so logical choice, right? Nope. Ground clearance wasn’t tall enough to handle typical Minnesota snow storms and plow ruts. It almost always seemed he would end up stranded 200 yards away from his driveway trapped in place with a solid foundation of snow locked under the poor thing.
P.S. Paul, it looks like you’ve caught this one before 😉
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-outtake-subaru-justy-just-how-many-are-still-left/
Ha! That’s scary, actually. Because I think I remember all the cars I’ve shot and posted, but that post totally dropped out of my CC memory banks. I guess I’ve sort of answered my question.
Theres a few of these about where I live Ive not seen one badged CVT so maybe that wasnt offered here, The survivors all seem to have elderly drivers and are in better order than this example.
Theres a 2 door I see in Savannah that was one of my early finds when I started looking out for CCs 9/10 months ago, don’t think its moved since then.
I’ve always had a soft spot for these. When I was a kid the Buick dealer my dad went to also sold Subarus. When he would take the Riviera in for service I’d sit in the showroom’s Justy and shift through the gears for fun. Its austerity actually was really cool for a kid like me that was used to the interior of a Buick or Olds. And the fact it was a 3-cylinder – wow! It was definitely a rare bird, at least by the standards of the mid 80s in the Chicago area.
Footnotes: the dealer closed a while back and it is now a weird used car lot that traffics in high end imports. On the cohort I need to post a Riv of the same year as my dad’s I found in a parking lot- it had the same dealer sticker on the trunk. This dealer used to also put the salesmans name on the sticker; it would have been a hoot had old Al Martino been on the lid.
Also, I ended up buying a 3 cylinder car a few years ago but it’s not quite as austere.
I bought one these new in 1990. It was a leftover 1989 model two door hatchback with the EVCT tranny. I drove off the lot for three grand and change because it had damage to the paint when it arrived in port.
The good:
It was great on gas, 35-40 mpg was the norm.
It highly maneuverable and easy to park, and with the back seats down I was always amazed at the amount of stuff I could fit back there. A true urban guerilla.
I was good in the snow because it was lightweight to the extent that friends would come by when I was at work, pick it up by hand, and move it from where I parked it as a practical joke !
The bad:
It only had 65-70 horse power, I live in the Mid Hudson Valley and I used to take it on the NYS Thruway, a white knuckled experience to say the least.
And, as mentioned earlier, the tranny was the weak link with mine shitting the bed somewhere north of 75K. I knew that going in to the deal and rolled the dice anyway.
All in all I had the car for approximately six years and I served me reasonably well.
I had a Justy – an ’89, I think. It was a 2-door 3-cylinder with 2wd and a 5 speed.
I really liked it, even if at 6-foot-6 I had to dog-leg the shift lever around my leg to put it in first gear. With a set of cheapo mags and some sticky tires it clung to the road, and I got 42 mpg highway with the air conditioning on. The bright red paint – even on interior body panels – was adorable, and people all but fell down with shock when I unfolded myself from it.
http://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/vehicledetails.xhtml?listingId=437143773&zip=55407&referrer=%2Fcars-for-sale%2Fsearchresults.xhtml%3Fzip%3D55407%26startYear%3D1981%26sortBy%3DderivedpriceDESC%26incremental%3Dall%26firstRecord%3D0%26endYear%3D2018%26modelCodeList%3DJUSTY%26makeCodeList%3DSUB%26searchRadius%3D0&startYear=1981&numRecords=25&firstRecord=0&endYear=2018&modelCodeList=JUSTY&makeCodeList=SUB&searchRadius=0&makeCode1=SUB&modelCode1=JUSTY
I just saw an early silver one maybe ’87 or ’88 In Salt Lake the other day. A younger guy was driving it, it looked well kept for a Justy. Someone else in West Jordan has a pair of the facelifted 5 door Justy’s.