Dashing through the snow is all well and good, but you could be leaping through it in Subaru Brat. That’s what Travis Pastrana has proven in his latest video.
Proving that the little Subaru adventure vehicle remains a pretty good little trucklet, the Brat is actually too grippy to do what Pastrana initially intended to do. On a snowy lake in Vermont, the adrenaline junky’s plan was to do a 360 through the air.
The problem with the stunt was the snow, of which several inches fell, covering the ice and providing the narrow tires with too much grip to go spinning quite as quickly as he needed to complete the full revolution in the air. Well, that and the vehicle’s overall lack of power.
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Produced between 1978 and 1994 (though it stopped being exported to the U.S. in 1987), the Bi-Drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter was powered by either a 1.6- or 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine. Later models made 73 hp (74 PS/54 kW) and a turbocharged model was apparently offered, making a whopping 94 hp (95 PS/70 kW). So Pastrana claiming that the Brat lacks power might not just be because he’s a spoiled racecar driver.
It does, however, prove to be a pretty fun car on the lake, doing long, lazy 360s with all four of its tires on the ground. It’s so controllable that Pastrana actually tries to roll down the window mid-360 to wave at the camera before realizing that he would actually have to, you know, roll it down.
Despite being unable to do the 360 in the air, anyone familiar with Pastrana’s oeuvre will know that he is unsatisfied until there is at least a little bit of air between him and the ground. So he and some kind Vermonters build a snow ramp and jump the Brat anyway.
Not much time is spent on the physics of the stunt, but it would appear that the Brat didn’t quite make it up to the correct speed before hitting the ramp and ended up taking a bigger chunk out of the landing pad than was optimal. That also leads Pastrana’s helmeted head to go pinballing around the cabin of the Brat, but it all turns out well in the end and the result is certainly spectacular.