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Guilty Pleasure: Subaru Justy 4WD

 
5 2,047 views Mar 23, 2011

Subaru_Justy_Project_Cars

Greetings, Motor Authority readers! Murilee Martin is in the house, in order to share the joy that comes with the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™ with each and every one of you. Now, before you can step up to such fine MMLB™ products as the Fission Ready Neptunium-237 Billet Wheels (available for any bolt pattern, provided it's a Renault three-lugger) or the Triangular Purple Drank cup holder insert (fits triangular cough-syrup bottles and keeps that cup-o-lean from dumping all over your metalflake Naugahyde interior), you need to slide behind the wheel of a car that's inherently geeky and/or terrible, yet somehow cool in spite of itself.

Yes, a guilty pleasure car, as we call it around these parts; you don't really want to admit you want one, yet you find yourself entering its name in the Craigslist search field and hoping for a deal so cheap that you'll have an excuse for buying it.

For me, the Subaru Justy 4WD is such a car. These days, we all know that Subarus are solid, reliable machines— hell, I have an Outback myself, as required by unwritten Denver law— but such has not always been the case. Back in the late 1980s, Subarus were much flakier, considered reliable only when compared with the likes of the Isuzu I-Mark.  

Weird people drove Subarus, and the weirdest of them chose the Justy, a truly miserable three-cylinder subcompact with styling that looked something like a car sketched on the back of a 12-pack box by a drunk who'd just heard a verbal description of the Simca 1204. 66 horsepower, super-cheapo interior, and— in many cases— saddled with a continuously-variable transmission that turned gasoline into engine noise. And yet... and yet, Subaru saw fit to make a four-wheel-drive version of the Justy. Really!

And this is why I want one. I'm looking for a beater four-wheel-drive winter car to drive in my newly adopted state of Colorado (having moved here from snow-free Northern California last summer), and I've already considered the AMC Eagle, the Mazda 323 GTX, the IHC Scout, and even the BMW 325iX. Now I've become fixated on a Justy 4WD, because it's so terrible-yet-wonderful, with that answer-to-a-question-nobody-was-asking absurdity that's so entertaining when it comes from a time that's comfortably in the past. I must have one!

Right now, the only thing I can find online is this pair of project Justys in Pittsburgh, which is too far away, and the 4WD one has the dreaded CVT. Still, I'll keep looking... until the next Guilty Pleasure comes along.






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Comments (5)

  1. By Al Posted: 3/23/2011 9:08am PDT

    Murilee, howdy! I hope you find your Justy. No, Subie owners aren't weird, everyone else is weird. I feel sorry for weird people, then, because they're weird and don't know the beauty of symmetrical all-wheel drive and boxer engines. People who don't want the safety of AWD + the power and lower center of mass of boxers are weird.
    May I suggest another alternative, if you can't find your Justy: the Loyale. It's almost a mini-Volvo from the late 80s.
     
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  2. By Tiberiusẅisë Posted: 3/23/2011 10:18am PDT

    Great article! Too bad you're not up for a true, how do you say, project car heck? Surely you could cobble one car together from this pair. Switch door skins just for fun. Oh the possibilities.
     
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  3. By discontinuuity Posted: 3/23/2011 11:40am PDT

    I'm almost sorry to post this ad:
    http://denver.craigslist.org/cto/2261975924.html
    You could also talk to my neighbor's friend -- he always seems to have some old BRAT, Justy, or some other old rusty Subaru when he comes to visit. I'm pretty sure he has an all-Subaru junkyard in the mountains somewhere. He's the owner of the BRAT I photographed for DOTSBE last summer (not sure if that got published).
     
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  4. By Battles Posted: 3/24/2011 2:15am PDT

    @Discontinuity: That Justy looks awful. An ad that has to promise "never wrecked" must beat a "ran when parked" ad.
     
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  5. fb_1256210033 avatar Phil Stein Posted: 2/4/2012 8:12am PST

    Ace taste my man; the MMLB proven by one good decision. As a now-freelance motoring hack who's test driven damn-near every pre-2000 high performance-to-shitbox car on the market, it is my privilege to advise that one of the better cars to use these days is a Justy four-wheel drive. My 'T-rusty' [I'm in UK] escapes from sub-zero Arctic conditions while Range Rovers spin into ditches, will not dip below 38 [UK] mpg, will cruise at 90mph all day and has sufficiently direct non-powered controls to make its yacht-in-a-Force-10 handling a joy to master in the twisty bits. Fun. Oil, filter, plugs, tyres, fuel and she'll play whenever you want. That it looks like a shitbox is a boon: and don't diss the CVT - it is excellent; 4wd hole-shot demon
     
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