<VV> Beds and tailgates

[Jim Becker]

The strange rear seats of the Subaru Brat were added to avoid the chicken 
tax.

Related to the missing sunroof, I once worked with a guy that had previously 
worked at Ford and had written the program that printed window stickers for 
(I believe) the first generation Fiesta.  At some point during production, a 
fancy radio (FM? stereo?) was added to the options list.  His program 
discarded the "bad" data and kept printing.  He has no idea how many radios 
he gave away before somebody noticed the problem.

Side story:  He went by the name "Randy".  During the Fiesta project, he met 
several Brits when they were in Dearborn for one reason or another.  He 
always greeted them by saying "HI, I'm Randy."  Since this was way back 
before PBS imported all those British comedies, he had no idea why he kept 
getting strange looks when he introduced himself.  Evidently, the British 
don't use "randy" as a nickname.

Jim Becker

-----Original Message----- 
From: Vairtec Corp via VirtualVairs
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2015 7:19 AM
To: Sethracer at aol.com ; virtualvairs at corvair.org
Subject: Re:  Beds and tailgates

On 1/16/2015 1:26 AM, Sethracer--- via VirtualVairs wrote:
> The beds were made in the
> USA  and added after the trucks were imported. There were some strange
> tariffs, at  the time, which only applied to complete trucks. The 
> companies
> could import  them without beds, at a low tariff, and "complete" them 
> here.
> Toyota and Datsun did the same thing.

That "strange tariff" is still in place.  It's commonly referred to as
the "chicken tax" and it is why, all these years after the import
pickups from Japan, today's Ford Transit Connect is imported with rear
seats (making it a "car") and converted to the cargo configuration once
here.

Concerning incorrect badging, my aunt bought a new Dodge Omni -- or was
it a Plymouth Horizon?  Couldn't be sure, since both badges were on the car.

--Bob