Panel Truck ? Sedan Delivery ?

[Robberbaron]

15 hours ago, iamsuperdan said:

If I recall, the rear jump seats were installed to avoid the import tariffs placed on trucks at the time. By adding the seats, the BRAT became a passenger car. Technically.

The import taxes were huge on trucks back in the early 80s.  Like 10 or 20 % higher than on cars.

Try 25%, and it's still in effect to this day (to a lesser extent).  This is the infamous "Chicken Tax", which started out in 1964 as retaliation to European tariffs on imported (US) chicken.

Besides the BRAT, there have been all sorts of other creative workarounds to avoid the tax.  Pretty much all the Japanese-built mini trucks in the seventies were imported as chassis cabs, and the beds were installed here to avoid the tax.

More recently, when the Ford Transit Connect was being built in Turkey, they were all imported into the US as passenger vans with rear seats and windows.  Once they arrived stateside, Ford would rip out the back seats and windows and install blankouts to convert them to cargo vans.

Once NAFTA passed, that eliminated Mexico and Canada from the list of countries affected by the tax.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Robberbaron