Earlier today, a close friend and fellow Subaru Baja enthusiast mentioned one such vehicle for sale in New Hampshire with 230k miles on the odometer — not at all an uncommon sighting for these cars. The Baja was a single-generation (2002–2006) pickup “truck” based on Subaru’s lifted Outback station wagon. This example was on sale for below $5k, which is also quite common.
Enthusiasts love the Baja, and for good reason; the recent history of the US car market does not reveal a preponderance of small, car-based pickups. As of writing, the Ford Maverick now stands alone in this segment. But the Maverick, while still a fun, practical, and by American standards “compact” truck, weighs a few hundred pounds more and runs ~half a foot longer than the Subaru. The Mav is also based on a crossover SUV platform, whereas the Baja was based on a slightly raised car. The Baja could also be purchased in “Turbo” trim with the 2.4-liter turbocharged boxer engine from the contemporary Impreza WRX — one of the most iconic sport sedans of the last 30 years.
Turbo Bajas in decent shape with under 100k miles typically transact in the range of $15k for a “driver” to $30k for a very good example, to the extent that any Bajas remain well enough preserved or even desired to be considered worthy of archival maintenance. The now quarter-century-old Baja remains a cool and underrated part of Subaru’s enthusiast history, but my sense from the market is that there is a price cap for these because they did not loom large in the enthusiast conscious as did, and still do, the Impreza WRX STI or Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evolution.
While it is remarkable that a reasonably well kept example of a first Stateside generation STI can still be had for $37k, it’s important to remember that the STI and Evo models continued for a decade or more past the Baja, and — in the case of the WRX/STI — sold hundreds of thousands of units. Meanwhile, there are only ~30,000 Bajas in existence. Collector-grade STI and Evo models transact for more than $100k without fanfare, but the highest-priced Bajas sold on Cars & Bids and Bring a Trailer have been $17.5k and a still remarkable $55,550, respectively.
You can imagine my shock then at seeing in the suggested listings column under my friend’s high-mileage find a 28,000 mile ’05 Baja Turbo listed for $80,149 — and confirming its veracity on the dealer website. This is at an official Subaru dealer!
I figured this particular example would be a manual. After all, manual transmissions on modern classics can and do massively inflate values (just compare auction results for manual and automatic versions of *any* enthusiast car: BMW M3, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo, Porsche 911, Ferrari 575, Lamborghini Murcielago, etc. As the hosts of the popular This Car Pod podcast are wont to muse, any collector-grade manual enthusiast car has a functionally uncapped market value because: “find another one”. You want a garage kept, low mileage, exquisitely maintained, manual-gearbox Baja Turbo? It’s $80,000. Find another one. Oh, sorry, you can’t.
Except, this near-$100k CarGurus find is an automatic. In the cult of car enthusiasm, such is the equivalent of a Salvage title — it would be fairly expected to see this, admittedly particularly compelling, example of the model sell for $25k on an auction site. The $55k museum piece mentioned before had a much more desirable color (which is approximately half of the determinant of a collector car’s value anyway) and 1/3 the miles. What enthusiast is foaming at the mouth to spend 80 grand for a white auto with 30k on the odometer?
Find me another one? Just don’t find me one at all, and I’ll go out to buy a new Maverick SVT300 for half.
Author’s note
This $80,149 Baja is indeed a beautiful car and certainly worth collector-grade money to the extent such is forthcoming, and I still dream of owning a mint condition example one day. But I do genuinely wonder if the listed price is a clerical error. Perhaps a busy salesperson touch-typed one too many digits on; or maybe this dealer has finally figured out that New Englanders really will pay any amount of money for that crunchy-granola-by-the-campfire social capital.
~ And no, you don’t need all-wheel drive. I’ve lived through three New England winters — including this past year, one of the snowiest and coldest on recent record — in a front-wheel drive VW GTI on all-season tires, and I’ve done more “off-roading” than most lifted 4x4s will see in their lifetimes.
