Oddly, the Subaru Baja is much more car-like than the Brat ever was (the Baja has 4 real seats, not jump seats), but when I had one, it was registered as a pickup, not a car.
The "truck" (trucks, SUVs etc) class of vehicles in the US have lower average gas mileage requirements than cars so many cars are made just large enough to be classified as "trucks" even though they are marketed still as cars. Subaru did this with almost all their cars back in 2004[1].
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20210609082852/https://www.nytim...