Let’s say, hypothetically, you’re out going for a nice hike in the woods, when you happen to see a discarded chili dog glowing and hovering by the side of the trail. Sure, the glowing and hovering parts are a bit unusual, but it’s a discarded chili dog, and you know what to do with those: grab them from the ground and force it into your waiting mouth, rapidly and fervently.
As you’re shoving the chili dog into your mouth, accompanied by all of the usual gnuff ung unch glomph mmomph sounds, eyes open wide and wild, sweat beading on your forehead, you start to notice something unusual. You feel a presence in your mind, a powerful force of light and power.
The force begins to speak to you: it’s what the Japanese would call a yōkai, a powerful spirit that has, in this case, become trapped in the form of that chili dog. It thanks you for freeing it from the confines of that frankfurter, and in return grants you any wish you want, as long as that wish is for a car that combines two well-known cars powered by flat-four engines.
Luckily, that’s pretty much what you would have wished for anyway. I know I set this up as a hypothetical, but I have reason to believe this very event may have actually happened, because it’s the only explanation for this:
See what’s going on there? Someone is selling what appears to be a Volkswagen Super Beetle/Subaru BRAT mash-up.
Yes, that’s right, a Beetle-BRAT. Both once had horizontally-opposed four-cylinder engines, but this iteration only retains the VW engine, since it appears what we’re looking at is a Super Beetle with a body chopped at the B-pillar and replaced with the bed of a BRAT.
It’s also worth noting that the Super Beetle here has an aftermarket fiberglass hood – often called the “Plymouth style” or something like that. This hood would give a Super Beetle a pretty massive trunk under there!
Also, the windshield decal reading “All Mixed Up” feels like a pleasingly honest assessment of this car’s state.
More importantly, that bed of the Brat retains the BRAT’s most endearing and exciting trait: the pair of Chicken Tax-dodging seats in the bed, complete with Oh Shit handles:
The engine is still at the rear, covered with a sorta-flimsy-looking sheet metal box that looks like, when closed, might make a pretty good ottoman:
That picture is pretty horribly blurry, but that engine looks to be a 1600cc dual-port engine with an aftermarket air cleaner and fan shroud.
Oh, as a weird aside, I decided to see if Photoshop’s new built-in AI tools may be able to make that image a bit less blurry. The tools failed to do so, but the manner in which the AI failed is so deeply bizarre. Here’s one of the results it gave me, when asked to make the image above less blurry:
What. The. Fuck? How? Why? What about that image caused that strange black box of conditional statements to decide to render an image of … of a woman with, what, Vaseline on her finger? And thumb? And proffering it to me?
And it’s still blurry? What the hell is going on in those silicon brains? Years ago, if you told me that we’d have computers that could use “artificial intelligence” but sometimes they didn’t work the way you expected, I don’t think I’d ever have guessed that they could mistakenly turn a picture of the engine of a strangely customized VW and make it look like a woman about to prep me to have my temperature taken, rectally.
What a world we live in.
I also can’t help but be reminded of another strange VW-Subaru hybrid that seems to crop up online all the time, this red half-Subaru, half-Beetle:
The red chimera is the opposite of the BRATtle there, with a front from a Subaru, rear from a Beetle, and both engines retained, but it’s still part of this tiny and strange family.
I tried calling the seller to get more information, but was unable to make contact. Still, if you have four grand lying around and little or no sense, I can’t think of a better car to get!
Same Idea, 26 Years Apart: 1980 Subaru Brat vs 2006 Subaru Baja
This Nissan-Powered VW Hormiga Is One Of The Weirdest Cars For Sale In America Right Now
This Chrysler Cirrus Ute For Sale Claims To Be A Prototype But Really It’s Just Bizarre
It’s very odd, but I love it.
That red one though – ugh.
Still think this is fun, despite the WTFFactor. And if you want the modern version check out Smyth Kit Cars. I just finished the charger version and will be posting a video on my channel about the build. And if DT, or Torch or Mercedes are back in the PNW any time soon I would be happy to take them on a drive. https://www.smythkitcars.com/new-beetle-truck-conversion
BeetleRAT
Good Lord, it’s the PT Cruiser’s cousin from Alabama.
Technically, it’s the cousin from North Carolina.
The first thing I thought was what if they retained both motors? Then you went and found me the red one that had both!!! Did anyone else love the dual motor AWD Honda Prelude that just sold on CarsandBids?
All mixed up
You don’t know what to do
Next thing you turn around and find you’re part Subaru
Thought of your sis a VW Thing
But there’s a box on your engine for some class
‘Cause there’s a bed on your ass
I wonder if anyone still even listens to 311 nowadays…
You’ve got a beetle and a BRAT, but you choose a chili dog? BRATwurst was right there!
And that was the “wurst” BRAT I’ve ever seen.
This guy did as Nick Hexum said and trusted his instinct and let go of regret
Friday you propose St.Peters Skidpad, but this you call unholy.(not wrong on either) Scarfing down discarded chillidogs, glow-floaty or not, surely leads to eternal damnation. That AI image looks like a trojan ad.
It’s funny, but at least on my browser. the ads that are inserted are for an AI upscaling program. Not only that, but the illustrations are of boxes about the size that you would put a basketball in with neat little carrying handles. I’m pretty sure software doesn’t come like that these days.
Note that the AI generated picture has two thumbs. One is obvious and the other is folded over the middle finger. This must be an extra-evolved person.
I think the event that happened to cause the theoretical chili dog and this care is very much the same. But it involves regular consumption of Lophophora williamsii.
Would this qualify for a “punch buggy”?
I would say so based on how my brother and I played, and based on the condition it might also qualify as a padiddle and/or padunkle so it could turn into a real beatdown.
Back in the day, during my “art” photography moment, one of the tricks of trade to add “class” when snapping snappers was to very lightly coat the camera lens with Vaseline which lends the resulting image a dreamy, hazy effect so it’s less porn and more misty morn (often the model’s name, coincidentally). You did instruct the AI to make it less blurry and perhaps the woman pictured is, in fact, trying to remove Vaseline from the lens to reduce the blur. Just a guess.
That was AI offering up a rectal exam. That will be all of our future’s when the robotic overlords take over.
Too bad this isn’t a VW 311 based on the windshield banner.
There are several such designs out there but I’ve usually heard them grouped together as “’40 Ford style hoods” regardless of the extent to which they resemble the original.
I started reading and was pretty sure my dog wrote the first paragraph but kept reading and by the second and third I realized this was clearly Torch’s work.
Yet the tail lights are strangely ignored, cropped out even.
This reminds me of the harmonium. A musical instrument combining the pipe organ and the treadle sewing machine and succeeding in getting worst aspects of both
OK, but if you’re Simon Jeffes and you find one abandoned by the curb somewhere in Japan, you can compose a great song on it.
And then there’s always the hurdy-gurdy, which combines the rock-solid reliability and consistency of a violin with the musical splendor of a pencil sharpener.
Non-vehicular COTD for Gubbin please!
You’ve made all two Penguin Cafe Autopian fans happy, bravo!
I saw Allen Ginsberg do a reading of Howl accompanying himself on a harmonium, and it was awesome.
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.”
Yeah
Taught myself Allegro con brio on one of the three pump organs my brother and I rebuilt. We used to be able to pick them up cheap or free needing repair.
I’m sorry that I don’t have anything witty or trenchant to say about the Beetle/Brat hybrid, or the workings of AI, but I so rarely get to be the first to reply to anything…