This Brat/Beetle Crossbreed Can Be Yours for Just $7,000
In case you love flat-four engines and four-wheel-drive, but can’t afford a WRX.
Craigslist is a bottomless source of entertainment, even after you count out all the personal ads involving cowboys and Twizzlers, written in graphic detail. Much of this fun can be found by clicking the cars and trucks category, and then diving into the for sale by owner subsection by typing the keyword "custom" into the search bar. You can get some pretty entertaining results, courtesy of the seller posting an absurd asking price, listing tasteless modifications, or conspicuously wording their ad. Every once in a while, however, something comes up for sale that makes you tilt your head and wonder... why?
An ad of such quality came up within the last few days. Someone is selling a custom built mix of a Subaru BRAT and an original air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle, joined amidships. The seller (and presumably, builder) of this car is keen to inform you that it does in fact have two engines, and that they both function. In front is a water cooled 1.8 liter Subaru flat four, making 73 horsepower, and in the rear, a 1.1 liter air cooled Volkswagen flat four, making at least 29 horsepower. As the year of the original donor cars is not stated in the ad, and there are no pictures of the VW engine, a conservative estimate on the latter's power figure is a safer guess.
God only knows how this vehicle was constructed. Were the frames of the BRAT and Bug welded together, or was the transaxle from the latter just mounted in the aft of the bed of the former? Is there a transfer case connecting the two drivetrains? Is there any torsional rigidity in the roof? How big was the body shop bill to get the Beetle's body panels to blend into those of the BRAT?
Whoever the prospective buyer may be should be the person to ask those questions. Have no fear if you are not a native English speaker, because half of the ad is en español.
