The Baja is a four-door coupe utility, all-wheel-drive, four passenger car manufactured by Subaru between 2002 and 2006 in the United States at Lafayette factory in Indiana. This car geniously combine the characteristics of a traditional passenger car with the load capacity of a pickup!
The Subaru Baja is the successor of the famous Subaru Brat! Do you remember, we already talked about the Subaru Brat in a previous blog here.
Peter Tenn, the Baja’s designer, described his new car in an interview back in 2002 as following: “the Baja’s jarring look is homage to rally-race trucks. It’s supposed to look funky, look different. It doesn’t fit any category, and we knew that going in. It’s not like anything else on the road. And that’s important to a lot of people”. And we couldn’t agree more…
Two years before its release, in 2000, at the Los Angeles Auto Show the ST-X concept (for Subaru Truck X-perimental) was introduced. It is a hybrid of car and pickup. The concept is not new: the Australians invented it in the 30s (they call it a ute) and has been already done on the Chevrolet El Camino and Ford Ranchero.
Only 30’000 cars were sold and it has not been a success, because Americans preferred the pick-up trucks from this category.
Let’s give you some specifications of the car now:
* Engine type: 2.5 liter flat 4
* Drive type: AWD
* Horsepower: 165 @ 5,600 rpm
* Torque: 166 @ 4,000 rpm
* 0-60 mph (96 km/h): 9.9 seconds
You can buy the Subaru Baja reproduced at the 1/18 scale by DNA Collectibles in our shop here.
Interested in test drives made by professionals? We do too! So we have selected for you this very nice and objective review of the Subaru Baja with Graeme Fletcher from the show “Throwback Thurday”. This video was posted by Motoring TV on Youtube in September 21st 2017: