Old Subarus like this one aren’t exactly a common sight, even here in one of Subaru’s traditional U.S. strongholds, the Pacific Northwest.
The setting isn’t exactly a showroom, but the way this car is parked at an angle reminds me of a brand-new car posed behind glass at a dealership. But no dealer showroom would have such a surreal backdrop; to the left of the car are the remnants of windows that were bricked-up and painted over, and to the right, there are painted-on fake windows! Note the Montana license plate; they’re not very common here in Seattle.
My opening photo was a hail-Mary shot with the camera held over my head; this picture taken from eye level tells a very sad story. The poor Subaru is incarcerated, and it might be a life sentence.
It’s not the most dignified fate for an old car; on public display behind wire mesh, at an urban storage-for-rent facility. The automotive equivalent of the pillory! Look at that flat tire. You know a car has been sitting a while if the whitewalls have started to run.
There’s no “4WD” emblem on the tailgate; this is (or was) a two-wheel drive Subaru. Of course Subaru sold a 4-wheel drive version of the wagon back then, but it used an old- fashioned part-time 4-wheel drive system, nothing like their current Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive.
I’m intrigued by the chrome trim on the D pillar. It looks like the framing for a vinyl top.
But if any vinyl was ever on top of this car, it’s long gone, along with most of the paint. I’ve seen this sort of ‘top-down’ surface rust pattern before, mostly on cars parked very close to the ocean.
But this car isn’t parked by the shoreline, and it looks like it’s been in this same spot for quite a while. This Subaru also has the air of a car that punched a clock and worked for a living; a real blue-collar Subaru. But who knows what the owner did for a living, and what solvents his station wagon got exposed to in the process? It’s hard to say. Maybe he’s in jail, too!
Not many wagons out there with vinyl tops and roof racks!
Wonder if the “vinyl roof wagon” was a 70’s Japanese thing. The only other one I can think of off the top of my head where they were available was the Datsun 510 wagon.
I’ve seen a late 60’s Chrysler wagon with a vinyl roof.
I’ve seen a few 70-72 Ford and Mercury wagons and roof racks as factory options. They were very few and usually with the wood grain side packages.
My 75 Buick Estate wagon has a factory vinyl top and a roof rack, it is unusual.
This car had a vinyl top and in true factory fitted fashion they saved money by not painting the metal underneath, the reason vinyl tops are best avoided if you live in a humid climate.
Vinyl tops should be avoided regardless of where one lives. The only legitimate reason for a vinyl top on a car is if it folds up and retracts, otherwise no thanks.
Even then avoid vinyl. Canvas last longer.
What a rottenly bad idea the vinyl roof was. My dad ordered his 1979 F-41 Impala with a white vinyl roof, thinking it would be cooler in summer. Yeah, right, it’s the Wet Coast and the car had a/c anyway that was designed for Texas, not Vancouver Island!. Keeping the thing clean in the ravages of all the neighbours’ (and our) wood stoves proved an impossible task.
That said, GM did them the best. They seemed to split less and have fewer problems with rust underneaths. The big Chrysler’s were the worst.
The Buick station wagon in the recent movie “The Way, Way Back” had a vinyl roof and roof rack as well!
Vinyl tops and roof racks were often seen on UK cars in the 70s.Usually a 1600 E Cortina Mk2 which by the early 70s had gone down in price and was used by a painter or window cleaner.My 2nd boyfriend at school in 1973 got his Dad’s old Mk2 Cortina(with peeling silver paint despite being only 5 years old) and vinyl roof and rack.
I remember this generation of Subarus. My favourite was the 4wd station wagon.
Wow – I cannot recall the last time I saw one of these – what a time warp!!
When in Seattle I see a lot of Washington, some California, Idaho, Alaska, and Oregon plated vehicles, but you are right, not too many Montana plates. Not even Nevada or Utah vehicles are that common. Same with British Columbia.
As far as I know those Montana plates on the Subaru have not been legal for road use since George Bush Senior was president.
http://www.15q.net/mt.html
Nice find and pics Mike. I especially like your view selection in the first photo.
I am always amused to see cars that I considered particularly homely during their heyday, now seen quite docile by today’s tortured jellybean standards.
I am admittedly impressed by the graciously sized rear doors. The early 80s Civic wagon posted recently, had a similar quality. Practical (if oddball) cars like this once defined Subaru.
Very rare… always thought those Subarus(70’s) were UGLY. The 70’s Toyota Corolla and Corona wagons also had the vinyl top option.
I also remember, seeing, a Jaguar XJ6 estate coupe with the vinyl top in UK magazines… so not only a Japanese thingy. lol
I think most / all XJ coupes had vinyl tops to hide the roof damage from overflexing. Not many XJ 6 / 12 coupes were made
KJ
Vinyl top XJ Estate… not a coupe wagon, but, anyways…
Nice,a shame it never made it into mass production.I see quite a few Jaguar estates on UK roads today,another “We did it years ago,stopped and now there’s lots of them”
I don’t recall this Subaru,the first one I remember was bought by a guy I worked with in 1981 and when he said he was buying a Subaru the usual reply was”never heard of them mate!”
My hometown has had a strong Subaru presence longer than I can remember. It is a liberal college town, so imports of all stripes caught on sooner there than most areas. A strange phenomenon occurred there in the mid to late ’80s where a restaurant owner routinely found ten to fifteen year old Subarus with dead engines abandoned in their parking lot. The Subarus built in the late ’70s ran long enough to rust into nothingness, but the earliest ones seemed to be given to catastrophic failures triggered by being parked at Barnaby’s Pizza.
I do wish Subaru would go back to selling FWD versions of its cars.
My short list is down to two cars – the Mazda CX-5 and the Forester. The Forester has AWD, for which I have no use in the Desert Southwest, and gives up about 5mpg to the CX-5.
Selling a FWD Forester would (a) improve sales in the part of the country where AWD has no value and (b) help Subaru’s CAFE numbers (given the safe assumption that FWD versions would get a few more MPG).
Yeah, I have to wonder about that marketing strategy, too. A few years ago, I had a chance to buy a red 1988 or so FWD-only Subaru wagon from an elderly neighbor, and I stupidly passed on the deal. It had less that 30,000 miles on it at the time.
5 mpg better? at best it’s 3 mpg, and that’s with the underpowered 2.0 liter in the mazda with fwd. with the 2.5l in the mazda, they are the same mileage pretty much.
Well, the 2.5 in the Mazda is moot – can’t get it with a proper transmission. And the 2.0 with six-speed does way better than the six-speed Forester.
Get the CX5. More fun to drive than a Forester.
I have a better idea: RWD Forester!
You have to wonder what stories that Subaru could tell.
Do you know what the significance of the pipe on the roof could mean? Perhaps it was owned by a local handyman? Or plumber?
Either way, it was likely a solid work vehicles. Wish you could see the odometer on it.
I’ll agree with the comments above on FWD suby’s. Mine is FWD and I never felt the need for AWD. It just results in added complexity, additional costs for tire wear and lower fuel economy. AWD is great for Colorado or Maine, but in some states its really not justified, in my opinion.
My final rant is that Subaru doesn’t make a true wagon anymore. The legacy is long gone, the Impreza is closer to a hatch and the Outback is just plain goofy looking to me.
I wish they’d bring back a similar design to the mid-90’s legacy. Simple, fwd, low to the ground without any of the gimmicks of the current design language.
We still get new Legacy wagons in New Zealand. As per Legacies past, they’re basically the same as the Outback but lower. Similar gimmicky styling though. Here’s the current 2.5 turbo GT-B (and we also get a boring plain 2.5i still):
Thanks Scott.
The Legacy in your picture is pretty good looking, although a bit more bloated than my liking. I’m still not sure why we can’t have those here in the us. I suppose in the land of body cladding a proper wagon is out of sorts! I’ve noticed the newest generation of legacy looks VERY similar to a ford Taurus.
Does this version of the 2.5 have its gasket-munching tendencies reduced? I was and continue to be a big fan of the 1.8, the 2.2 and the turbo 2.0 from late 90s and early 2000s but couldn’t get onboard with the 2.5.
Yeah I miss the good old basic Loyale wagon. The current Outbacks are weird and too big imho.
AWD is great where it rains, too. My Outback performs tremendously here in Houston when the roads slick up in the first 15 minutes of a downpour. No matter what I bought last year, it would have been AWD.
Mileage isn’t bad. I average 26-27 in mixed driving; with a light foot and hypermiling behavior I can push it to 30….
Subaru needs to make a subcompact, that IS awd… and GREAT on gas to meet café standards…
Oh, they DID…
Bring back the JUSTY!!
My mother in law had a 4 door Justy. It was fun to drive in bad weather in 4wd. Not fun to be a passenger in though. Neat little cars. Still seem them around Seattle.
…this early body shape used a pushrod engine, right? ..a 1400cc ..that grew to 1600cc ..that grew to 1800cc (1781cc right? to be pendantic) ..they were a somewhat ‘clicky’ noisy engine until hydraulic lifters were used (in the ‘square’ Leone body shape circa 1985)… but the early 4WD version would still go just about anywhere with ‘dual range’ and diff locks..
Craig, these cars had endearing motors. Yes, they were a pushrod 1.6 that rumbled and clacked just like a VW, except, since they were liquid cooled, valve clearances were easy to set, this could be remedied easily. The low end grunt of these little flat fours was amazing and it was so simple under the hood the spare tire was mounted in there. Old Subarus had a cult following on Vancouver Island when I was a kid and this generation was kicking well into the 1990’s, due to the mild winters. They were really popular in the BC boonies which is pretty rough country in a lot of places. The 4WD system on these things was legendary as bulletproof since it as about as high tech as a ball peen hammer, which is exactly what you want in remote areas in the winter. They’d start up in really low temperatures, often below -30’C, with no block heater I saw one start at -25’C no problem. None of the other vehicles with carbs went, although, tellingly, all the ones with FI did….
Really, the offroad prowess of these things was legendary. I knew guys that boonie bashed in Subaru 4WD wagons in places big SUV’s or even Jeeps couldn’t get near. The low gearing, high clearance, low end torque and general toughness made these things very popular.
Great find – and excellent photos too – of a once-common car that’s now almost disappeared from our roads. One thing though, isn’t that white stuff flaking off the roof and tailgate the vinyl roof? I can’t imagine paint flipping up and over the roof-rack above the LH rear door like that.
Thank you, and I think you’re right about the flaky white stuff.
Hmm, the Scooby needs some Head & Shoulders! Or would that be Roof & Fenders? 🙂
My Father bought the 2 door equivalent to this in 1976..from a dealership in Winooski it was the first of many front-wheel drive cars he bought (I think they offered a 4WD wagon back then, but most of their product line was still 2WD). He didn’t have it very long, I think by 1980 he’d given it up to my Sister, who eventually got rid of it (probably from rust). I remember the hood bucked one time when it refused to latch (even the safety latch didn’t engage) and the wind blew up the hood and from then on, we had rubber shock cords between the two wheel wells to keep the hood down (it never latched properly after that). Even though it looked odd, we kept it that way for the rest of our ownership of it.
It was a pretty basic car, but it did have an Automatic (which my mother required) and an AM radio (that was considered a pretty neat standard feature back then), but no other options. It was that kind of pale yellow color which was really common amoungst Subaru’s back then, with a mustard colored vinyl interior.
options
Even back then, Subaru was making the marketing rounds…it was “official car of US ski team” and my brother in law (who was not otherwise impressed with the car in the least) started liking it, I think it allowed them free or special parking or something on the mountain (he’s a native Vermonter was a big skier back then). Still FWD was pretty new back then, and it served us well (including during the blizzard of ’78) while we were still living in snow country (which we left 31 years ago).
They sure did play up the ski team sponsorship, and did so for many years:
The comments on this article are a good example of why I like writing for this website. I feel like I’m hosting a party. Everyone has their own story to tell, and there’s always some topic or topics worthy of debate. None of this would have happened if I’d watched one more rerun on TV instead of writing this outtake.
I suppose that makes the Editors rather like the friend who takes me aside and lets me know that I have spinich stuck in my tooth. Everybody needs a friend like that…
I had a 1990 2wd Subaru wagon. It was very used when I got it, over 120k on the clock. It never left me stranded though, but it wasn’t great in the snow like the 4wd versions are. It was a good commuter car. I actually once got a speeding ticket in it on my way home from the swingshift at Boeing.
I got a speeding ticket while driving a Chevy Vega with an automatic. 70 MPH in a 55 MPH zone. Yes, I was going downhill.
I used to drive my Vega 70-75 on the highway all of the time (and got a speeding ticket for 68 in a 55 zone; of course that probably did not help the oil consumption issue any. Compared to the Chevette that came later in the seventies, the Vega was a virtual hot rod, at least when it had the four speed manual transmission. I remember driving my sister’s Chevette, with the auto trans, and it would struggle to reach to reach 60 MPH.