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Win a Trip to See Pens vs Flyers Live

Have you filled out this quick survey yet? Your submission automatically enters you to win airfare, hotel and two tickets to the Pittsburgh Penguins vs. Philadelphia Flyers game on February 18th. Contest runs until 02/12/12.

Thank you to the author of this 5-star review!

I lease a Subaru Impreza from here and my brother-in-law just bought one too. The salespeople are nice and the service department is awesome. It's the nicest waiting area I've ever seen w/ free coffee and snacks plus WiFi and couches, plus again everyone is very kind. I would buy from Baierl again. -Nick

Groupon: “An Evening with Jon Faddis”

Nothing can match the thrill of seeing a concert in-person, not even watching it on a high-definition Blu-Ray or listening to it on a high-definition parrot. Get out of your cage with today's Groupon deal to “An Evening with Jon Faddis”. The concert will take place at MCG Jazz, a concert hall sponsored by Baierl. Tickets are currently half-off at $28/each (a $57.50 value).

How Ronald Reagan Became A Secret Subaru Test Driver

In Ronald Reagan's day, it wasn't smart for an American politician to be seen in a Japanese vehicle, but the soon-to-be-President quietly kept a quirky Subaru BRAT at his ranch in California under an agreement that the automaker would get progress reports from Reagan on the little truck's performance. Read about how this strange arrangement came to be in this report from Benjamin Preston exclusively for Jalopnik —Ed.

Subaru BRATs are cool, if somewhat quirky cars. Adapting the popular Subaru station wagon in 1978, Japanese engineers managed to smear a dollop of pickup truck utility onto a small car platform powered by a 67-hp flat four.

The odd little proto-SUV caught the eye of one of President Ronald Reagan's advisers that same year, not long before Reagan made his second presidential run. Richard V. Allen, a Japan expert who served as Reagan's National Security Advisor for a short time after the Gipper took over the White House in 1981, arranged through one of his contacts at Fuji Heavy Industries (the company of which Subaru is a subsidiary) for the car to be given to the then former California governor and failed 1976 presidential candidate. 

The BRAT's circuitous entry into the U.S. market began a bit earlier, as Subaru devised a way around the "Chicken War" tariff — the residue of a Johnson-era trade dispute with West Germany that, to this day, levies a 25 percent tax on imported light trucks (for example, you may have noticed that the Turkish-assembled Ford Transit Connect undergoes a strange, and some would say wasteful, transformation when it lands on American shores). Subaru's solution was simple. The company installed a pair of plastic jump seats in the bed of each truck, instantly morphing it — in a regulatory sense, anyway — into a passenger vehicle.

Allen got word that BRATs were being tested to destruction at a proving ground in the desert somewhere out west. He said his Fuji contact told him they were having trouble destroying the jump-seated warriors. 

"I said, 'I have a friend with a ranch. You could give him one of the destructed ones and see how much longer he could use it,'" Allen recalls.  

That's how a Subaru BRAT ended up at Reagan's ranch in the mountains west of Santa Barbara, Calif. (after being sprayed with a fresh coat of fire engine red paint). The only condition Subaru had was that the car's new owner file a report on its performance every six months, making Reagan a test driver of sorts for the company.

Rancho del Cielo was (and still is) an apt home for the BRAT, and for a time, Reagan was a big fan of the diminutive sport ute. 

"It was a tough little dude on the ranch and Reagan loved it," Allen says. 

But in 1980, a time when Japanese automakers were mopping Detroit's detritus from the factory floor, it was, among Reagan's crowd of campaign advisers, considered a political faux pas for the presidential hopeful to be seen in a Japanese car. That's why you'll never see pictures of a smiling Ronnie loading brush and fence posts into the BRAT's little bed (pictures of him smiling and doing ranch activities in other settings are plentiful). 

"At the time, members of Congress were putting Japanese cars on the steps of the Capitol and smashing them with sledgehammers," says Allen, who had owned a Japanese car himself since 1971, but realized that for his boss, leaking such a fact to the press could be the presidential candidate's undoing. 

Even after his presidency, Reagan spent a great deal of his time away from the Western White House — often at his home in Bel Aire, Calif. But the ranch caretaker, Lee Clearwater, and a pair of retired California Highway Patrol officers (one of whom, Barney Barnett, held the BRAT's title and filed its semiannual performance reports after the 1980 presidential race) used the presidentially jilted BRAT for ranch work and supply runs down the mountain into Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez Valley. (The ranch, a collection of modest buildings and wooded hills, sits on a stunning 688-acre chunk of property straddling the mountains separating Santa Barbara County's south coast from its wine country.)

When the Young America's Foundation, a conservative student organization, bought the ranch to preserve the altar of Reaganism in 1998, the presidential Subaru was gone, having been transferred to someone else's ownership a year earlier. In 2003, the BRAT resurfaced on eBay, only to be snatched up by a gentleman in Georgia. YAF bought it from him a year later for an undisclosed amount. It was in rough shape after years of use as a ranch vehicle, but Allen stepped in again to arrange, through Subaru of America, a complete restoration. 

As the years go by, BRATs are less and less common a sight, so good luck finding one that hasn't been thrashed to within an inch of being sent to the junk pile. The one sitting quietly in the tack shed at Rancho del Cielo might as well be brand new. Its interior vinyl has a refreshed new car smell, its engine and undercarriage are spotless and its white powder coated steel wagon wheels gleam beneath the California sun. 

YAF leads tours of the ranch, so it's possible to see the BRAT, along with a host of other Ronnie memorabilia. Tours begin at the organization's headquarters in downtown Santa Barbara. There you will watch a video depicting Democratic presidents alongside images of economic woe and wounded American pride, and corresponding footage of Ronald Reagan bringing morning to America. You will also learn how the free world conquered communism, and look upon dozens of smiling portraits of the Gipper before being whisked off to the ranch in a Chevy Suburban. 

YAF staffers say that Reagan spent a lot of time in Rancho del Cieolo's tack shed preparing for horseback rides and fence building expeditions. These days, the shed is silent, save when caretaker George Thompson comes in, making sure its contents are immaculate. Whether or not you're a fan of the departed 40th president, a trip up to his ranch is a worthwhile experience. Where else can you see a perfect BRAT on an even more perfect slice of coastal California mountaintop?

 

Courtesy of Jalopnik

Fashion with Compassion

• When: Thursday, February 9th from 6-8:30pm

• Where: Fairmont Pittsburgh, downtown

 

Baierl Fiat is sponsoring this "fun for a cause" community event. Tickets are $45 each or two for $80. 100% of the proceeds will go to Go Red for Women.

The event features a strolling fashion show with models from The Docherty Agency, live music, hors d'oeuvres, cocktails, fashion retailers and more. For tickets, contact Wendy McCabe at the American Heart Association, 412-208-3559 or wendy.mccabe@heart.org

Two days until World of Wheels!

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Don't forget to stop in for free tickets to the World of Wheels event, which is starting in two days!

The three day event, hosted at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, includes the 2012 Builder of The Year Exhibit, Pittsburgh’s TOP 10 presented by RPM Motorsports, Drag City USA Presented by Pittsburgh Raceway Park, and much more. See date-specific features below.

Friday, January 27th from 3pm-10pm
• Meguiar’s Car Care Tips - Heavy Duty Headlight Restoration
• Guest Appearance - Liz Cavalier from TV's "Swamp People"
• BMX Extreme Stunt Show

Saturday, January 28th from 11am-10pm
• Guest Appearances - Rey Mysterio (WWE Superstar) and Deena Nicole from TV's "Jersey Shore"
• Pinball Tournament
• Pittsburgh High Scrollers Pinstripe Charity Auction
• BMX Extreme Stunt Show

Sunday, January 29th from 11am-7pm
• Meguiar’s Car Care Tips - How to Choose the Right Product
• Guest Appearance - Billy the Exterminator
• Pittsburgh High Scrollers Pinstripe Charity Auction
• BMX Extreme Stunt Show

Only six more days to use your eCoupon!

Pittsburgh still hasn't seen the end of winter yet...but our Winter Service Special eCoupon only has 6 more days until it's gone for good!

2012 Subaru Impreza Video

The fully redesigned 2012 Subaru Impreza is a marked improvement over the car it replaces, according to Cars.com Executive Editor Joe Wiesenfelder. The new Impreza has a grown-up feel to it and improves its visibility at a time when other redesigned compacts are harder to see out of.

 

Courtesy of Cars.com

Win a Trip to See Pens vs Flyers Live

Would you like to win airfare, hotel and two tickets to the Pittsburgh Penguins vs. Philadelphia Flyers game on February 18th? Baierl has always made car shopping easy – and now we’re making it easy to get you to the ice! Just fill out this short survey for your chance to win.

Rally America national champion David Higgins to defend title with Subaru

 

Subaru Rally Team USA announced on Wednesday that David Higgins, the 2011 Rally America national champion, will remain with Subaru as a factory driver for the team in 2012.

Higgins and the Subaru team begin the 2012 season with the SnoDrift Rally in the northern Michigan communities of Atlanta, Lewiston and Hillman, Jan. 27 and 28, against a field of more than 70 entries. Co-driver Craig Drew will once again join Higgins, and the duo will pilot a Vermont SportsCar-prepared 2012 Subaru WRX STI in all six rounds of the championship.

X Games icon Dave Mirra, Higgins's Subaru teammate in 2011, is expected to continue to drive for Subaru but will focus on the Global RallyCross Championship because of several conflicting dates with the Rally America event calendar. An announcement about the team's rallycross plans will be made in the near future.

Higgins joined the Subaru team at the start of the 2011 season and had an impressive year at the wheel of his WRX STI, earning three victories and two second overall finishes in the six-event 2011 championship. He also claimed victory and a new record at the famed Mount Washington Hillclimb.

 

The 2011 Rally America driver's title was the third for Higgins in the United States, having won the SCCA ProRally Championship in 2002 and 2003. Higgins also took the British Rally Championship in 2004.

Higgins and his family also operate a United Kingdom-based training facility, the Forest Experience Rally School. Higgins was born on the Isle of Man but resides in Wales with his wife and two children.

“I'm excited to defend my title with Subaru as we have made some great progress in the development of our STI rally car in the off-season, and so the confidence is high right now,” Higgins said. “The Rally America championship is a fantastic series with a great mix of events and conditions coupled with a very high level of competition. I expect 2012 to be a big fight but we have the right car and the right team, so I'm really looking forward to it.”

 

Courtesy of Auto Week

Visit Baierl Subaru to pick up your FREE tickets for the 51st annual World of Wheels car show.

Baierl Subaru is proud to sponsor the 51st annual World of Wheels car show. Stop in to our dealership to get your FREE tickets while supplies last!

The three day event, hosted at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, includes the 2012 Builder of The Year Exhibit, Pittsburgh’s TOP 10 presented by RPM Motorsports, Drag City USA Presented by Pittsburgh Raceway Park, and much more. Date-specific features are below.

Friday, January 27th from 3pm-10pm
• Meguiar’s Car Care Tips - Heavy Duty Headlight Restoration
• Guest Appearance - Liz Cavalier from TV's "Swamp People"
• BMX Extreme Stunt Show

Saturday, January 28th from 11am-10pm
• Guest Appearances - Rey Mysterio (WWE Superstar) and Deena Nicole from TV's "Jersey Shore"
• Pinball Tournament
• Pittsburgh High Scrollers Pinstripe Charity Auction
• BMX Extreme Stunt Show

Sunday, January 29th from 11am-7pm
• Meguiar’s Car Care Tips - How to Choose the Right Product
• Guest Appearance - Billy the Exterminator
• Pittsburgh High Scrollers Pinstripe Charity Auction
• BMX Extreme Stunt Show