Project Subaru Justy: Itty Bitty Wheels and Tires

My Justy’s previous owner sold the car to me with a brand-new set of tires mounted on alloy wheels. He said he had spent a good amount of time finding wheels that were the right size and period-correct. It was clear the man loved the car and was interested in taking good care of it, but that also meant the Justy rolled with balloons on the same sort of wheels I’ve seen on dozens of Pontiac Grand Ams.


The previous owner also gave me the Justy’s original steel wheels with decent tires (Bridgestone Potenza RE92, 165/65R13). These were, thankfully, not the base 12-inchers. It’s nigh impossible to find 12-inch tires anywhere; 13s are hard to find in anything except Wal-Mart specials.

That’s why I received this Justy with 14-inch American Racing AR24 wheels wearing China-made Aeolus Precision Ace tires in a 175/65R14. This, he said, is as large a tire as you can reasonably fit in a Justy without too much rubbing. He did this to counter the car’s low final drive ratio, which makes it a chore to drive at interstate-highway speeds. It’s loud. Bigger tires help bring that down a bit.

Still, the big tires rubbed the rear fenders quite a bit, especially over bumps. It was starting to chew away at the car’s OEM plastic fender flares and dig into the tires themselves. I had been thinking about mounting up the stock wheels when I remembered what my friend Tom had in his garage.

It was another set of American Racing AR24 wheels, but painted, and fitted with sticky (but old) Yokohama Advan A048 tires, sized 185/60R13. It doesn’t get any better than this for a Justy. Since the tires had been collecting dust forever and won’t fit many other cars, he gave them to me for a hearty handshake. The wheel swap also afforded me a chance to look over the car’s undercarriage and suspension.

True to it being a Florida car, it’s remarkably rust-free underneath. The only real rust on the car is underneath the battery tray. The seller had the whole front end redone, with new axles, brakes and bearings. He couldn’t find replacement sway bar bushings, so he had someone fabricate a new set out of Delrin.

This Justy is indeed really clean underneath. A notable fact about the rear suspension: Most small cars use a simple, cheap, and space-efficient twist-beam rear suspension. It’s possible to make this semi-independent design work with an AWD system, but Subaru instead fitted the Justy with true independent rear suspension that includes a sway bar.
I don’t mean to oversell it. It’s still very much a small, cheaply made car. But for what it is, there are several remarkable details that make the Justy unique and better than its peers. There are also details that make it much, much worse—but I’ll get to that in another post.

One final note: The keys for the Justy were very worn out. My local key shop was able to create a copy of the key with all the ridges, exactly as it looked when new.
 
Photos Copyright 2015 Hooniverse/Alan Cesar.