The Rear Of The Subaru 360 Custom Is So Pleasingly Busy

I’m a pretty fortunate person, overall. I realize that. And part of what makes me fortunate are these Cold Starts, which, as much as I may privately kvetch about having to come up with what to talk about every morning, I also have the incredible freedom to talk about, well, almost anything, as long as I can even sort of tenuously tie it to cars. That means no detail is too small, no thought too inane or insignificant, no subject too trivial. This is a gift.

It’s also why I want to talk about not just the Subaru 360 Custom, but mostly about the rear quarter of the Subaru 360 Custom, and just how wonderfully busy it is.

Are you familiar with the Subaru 360 Custom? That was the name given to the station wagon version of the Subaru 360:

These were very clever little cars, and were a huge improvement over Subaru’s first attempt to make a 360 better suited to cargo-carrying, which was basically a normal 360 but with the rear windows hinged to flap downwards, making the rear of the car accessible to throw stuff into:

This wasn’t a bad quick solution that didn’t require a lot of new body stampings, but it wasn’t really good enough. The better solution was essentially the same one that Fiat used for their also-rear-engined 500, when they laid their inline-twin engine on its side and laid it under the floor to make the Fiat 500 Giardiniera:

It’s also a similar approach that used by Volkswagen with their Type 3 Squareback: engine under the floor at the rear, leaving luggage room in both back and front. It’s closer to the Fiat, though, as both cars used an inline-twin.

From the front to the B-pillar, it’s essentially the same as the normal 360; but the whole rear is different, squared-off and taller, allowing for a lot more room. Look at these diagrams of luggage accommodation in the standard 360, for example:

Sure, you can cram stuff in there if you fold down the rear seat, but with the back seat up you only have a tiny luggage well under the rear window and a big parcel shelf up front, under the dash. Compare that to the 360 Custom:

Cavernous! It’s downright cavernous! I’m not kidding, compared to the normal 360, this is a canyon of cargo capacity. Sure, the rear seat is folded here, but even up there’s a decent amount of cargo area here. And note how the interior is designed to handle a lot of stuff, with that cargo retaining bar at the front, folding out from the seatback, and those bars protecting the rear side windows. This is just a clever design, and a marvel of packaging.

That sticker on the lower left part of the engine lid gives the load capacity, too: a respectable 250 kg/550 pounds. All this, and I think it still retains most of the charm and looks of the Subaru 360. There’s been some lovely customized versions of these, too.

Okay, but I made a promise in that headline: to talk about how pleasingly busy the rear quarter of this thing is, and I intend to deliver on that. I mean, look at it:

There’s so much going on back there! Normally, I think busy-ness is a detriment in car design, but for whatever reason, I like it here. There’s rows and rows of louvers, there’s license plate housings, there’s informational stickers, chrome model badging, separate reverse lamps, reflectors, and taillights, all different shapes or sizes, theres a bumper and hinges, fender protectors, there’s handles and windows with bars in them and huge air intakes shaped like penguin wings and rain gutters and so many body seams and cutlines – it’s an absolute riot of everything, all at once.

I can’t tell you exactly why I love it, but I do.