The interior is mostly standard Outback. Everything is where you expect to find it, the seats are all-day comfortable, the trio of rotary HVAC controls is a model of efficiency and simplicity. There are just two clues that you're driving something odd: a cargo-lamp switch and a steering wheel with silver leather accents. This is intended to mimic the exterior cladding. Instead, it mimics those chrome Trans Am windbreakers that Burt Reynolds used to wear.
At first glance, the Baja's cargo bed appears useful. Sure enough, you can carry a 16-foot steel I-beam and Alan Iverson back there — if you stand both on end and avoid overhanging high-tension wires. In truth, the bed is more the size of Herve Villechaize — 41.5 inches long, 49 inches wide. The average snow shovel is 50 inches long; you'll have to drop it in there sideways. We managed to fit a Toro walk-behind mower back there. But unless you lower the tailgate, you can't even transport an average bicycle without draping a wheel over the top of a delicate fender. Folks with too much stuff — this would include every citizen in America — may wind up driving around with the tailgate permanently prone. Luckily, the optional three-bar bed extender is good at holding onto your larger loose items, and Subaru has even fitted a hinged bracket that allows the license to swing down, frustrating cops in otherwise crimeless neighborhoods.
Did you know that the original BRAT's bed was 21.5 inches longer? Just asking.
Between the bed and the rear seats is a surprisingly heavy pass-through hatch — metal, 30 inches wide, 12 inches tall. It can be opened only from within. The seatback folds flat, cleverly leaving the head restraints attached to the rear bulkhead, out of the way. With this secret hatch agape, you can carry objects that are 75 inches long — a fairly frightening mother-in-law, for example, though she'll want to place her head inside the vehicle, free and clear of rain and hail, whereas you'll want her pointed vice versa, because feet don't have a mouth.
On the right side of the pass-through is a plastic binnacle in which you can store, well, we don't know what: salted peanuts, dental dams, skate keys, your mother-in-law's death certificate. And you'll be pleased to learn that the Baja's bed doesn't shimmy like a Silverado's. This is partly due to those two exposed chrome tubes that we're all legally forbidden to call roll bars.
The Baja's rear seats are comfortable and commodious, even for adults, though they'd be more useful if you could stick your feet under the front seats. The rear doors are adult-size, too, lifted from you-know-where. A third rear rider is out, unless he's content to sit on a plastic console that leaves unsightly welts. Mind you, the BRAT and, come to think of it, the Dodge Rampage didn't have any rear seats at all. At least inside the truck.
Subaru hopes to sell 20,000 Bajas annually, and its marketing team is crystal clear and downright emphatic about not having a clue who will buy them. We applaud this candor and celebrate the arrival of any four-cylinder pickup that's fun to drive and weighs way south of two tons. It does strike us, however, that cuteness — a property the Baja flaunts like Larry King wears shoulder pads — is a trait that robust American males do not expect to find in their trucks. A cute truck is like a jockstrap with floral embroidery. A cute truck is like a riding mower with a spice rack. Like cuddling after sex. Possibly you get the idea.
Bajas start at $24,520, which includes leather, a sunroof, a roof rack, ABS, cruise, and an 80-watt CD stereo. A four-speed automatic adds $800. Beneath its clown suit, our test car seemed an honest piece of equipment that ought to make you feel you got your money's worth — at least until the first snowfall, when the all-wheel drive and the 7.3 inches of ground clearance mean you're again the first guy into the office.
We even know a way to save $950. Whisper to the salesman that you want your Baja fitted with a permanent glass-and-steel roof extending right over the cargo bay. He'll have one very nearby. On the showroom floor, in fact.
Subaru once introduced a vehicle called the Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter. Many persons were amused by this. Subaru didn't care. Subaru was perfectly happy selling that vehicle, the BRAT, for an entire decade. Fifteen years later, it's time again to set your dials to Full Weird. Say hello to the Baja, which is not unlike some sort of band-saw experiment during Mr. Gartner's third-period industrial-arts class.
Remember the Justy? Remember the SVX, with its Batman windows? Remember the AMC Eagle? Wait, Subaru didn't build that last one, but it could have. At Subaru, stuff like this just happens.
We'll raise no one's blood pressure by debating the Baja's aesthetics, except to ask one technical question: Does anybody out there know how to remove plastic cladding? Will a really powerful Norelco hair dryer and a half-dozen putty knives do the trick? And, just out of curiosity, why would a sentient stylist affix silver cladding to a flimsy fuel-filler door? Did Fuji Heavy Industries score a bulk rate on the cladding that Chevy couldn't glue to the Avalanche?
Note to Subaru: While rummaging through GM's parts bins, grab a few of the Escalade EXT's flying-buttress C-pillars, and you can disguise the squared-off rear cabin that causes otherwise shy pedestrians to shout, "What happened, you lose the ass of your Outback?"
As a matter of fact, we did.
The new Baja, which for federal CAFE purposes is classified as a light truck, possesses the Outback's hood, headlights, front fenders, doors, wheelbase, and 165-horse SOHC four-cylinder boxer. Everything aft of the rear doors, though, appears to have been lost in a tragic encounter with a snow plow.
You know what the Baja drives like? It drives like an Outback. This is good news. It means this 3581-pound truckette is among the best-handling pickups on the planet. Its steering is light but accurate, and the car - sorry, the truck - tracks with an unerring sense of straight-ahead, even on pavement you could use as riprap. The shifter is quick and easy, the clutch light, the pedals arrayed to encourage heel-and-toeing. Right there is a claim that Dodge Ram drivers rarely make.
Maybe the best news is that the Baja rides like a car. This may possibly be because the Baja is a car. Its struts and springs are sufficiently supple to swallow potholes and corrugations that make veteran sailors sick. There's moderate body roll, but it doesn't much affect lateral grip. It's fun to add more and more throttle until the 16-inch Potenzas yowl like amplifier feedback. It makes you look brave, and your passengers needn't know that grinding, everlasting understeer is only 4 mph upstream.
Gravel roads are even more fun. There, the Baja responds like a modern husband, begging to be pitched and tossed and generally cuffed about until loose items in the bed fly out and someone loses an eye. See how much dust you can raise. We raised enough to interest a Livingston County sheriff's deputy. Said the pink-cheeked cop, "What happened, your wagon lose its ass?"
A couple of years ago, Subaru comprehensively overhauled this 2.5-liter flat-four, losing a couple of cams along the way. If you haven't driven a Subaru since, you'll be buzzed by how much of the upper-register buzz is absent, yet the boxer's endearing groundhog growl remains. You can cruise all day in the 4000-to-5000-rpm range - no mechanical mayhem intrudes.
The Baja always feels light on its feet, agile, responsive, an accomplished urban errand hopper. Sixty mph comes in 9.3 seconds - no ball o' fire on on-ramps, although it's as quick as a Honda Civic LX sedan. Expressed another way, that's 11.8 seconds quicker than a VW Rabbit pickup we tested 22 years ago.
Our test car sported the optional Hella roof-top spotlights ($395) that resemble Lucifer's horns. Using these lights while the car is in motion is illegal approximately everywhere, such that someone's crack legal team ordered them wired to illuminate only when the hand brake is engaged. The lights do flip flat, however, so you can shine them through the sunroof and directly down your girlfriend's blouse. Plus, they remain blazing even when the engine's off, affording you an excellent opportunity to sample the entire line of Sears DieHards.
DANIEL PUND
Pigs don't spontaneously grow dragonfly wings. Penguins don't wake up one day with a thick head of hair like Ted Koppel's. And Alan Greenspan is unlikely to sprout a lobster claw from his forehead. There's a reason for this, apart from preventing everybody from freaking out. There's a natural order to things. Over the long-term, only the advantageous mutations survive. Sadly, the Subaru's vestigial pickup bed doesn't appear to have staying power. If you have cargo that is both small and dirty, the Baja makes some kind of sense. Otherwise, it's a curiosity — and a rather awkward-looking one at that. I need this vehicle like I need a Miata station wagon.
AARON ROBINSON
Like Hummers and Land Rovers, the Subaru Baja is a costume car. Accountant A becomes a bike trekker even if she never shook off training wheels. Dental Tech B becomes a surfer even if he hasn't bathed since Jaws. But unlike most owners of those other overstuffed fuel wasters, I don't begrudge a Baja buyer his or her getup. The Baja makes a small shadow, consumes resources at a more frugal rate, and jitterbugs through traffic with as much spring as its 165 horsepower can manage. It has space in back and a handy — if small — porthole for tall items. Subaru's wagons also shield the cargo from weather and thieves, but they don't fool anybody.
STEVE SPENCE
I'm confused about how to haul my rugged-outdoor-lifestyle-guy gear in the Baja. Of this photo, the press kit warns: "The images shown . . . are for representational purposes only. Please do not transport recreational equipment in this manner."
