Classic pearls of the future - Subaru SVX
01/09/2014
It looked like a concept car, its design came from the hand of a design master and yet many people didn't really like the car. At least not the people who should have bought it.
Subaru wanted to build 10,000 Subaru SVX (in Japan the car was called the Alcyone SVX) per year from 1991, but even in the USA people were obviously reserved about the rounded successor to the wedge-shaped Subaru XT. After six years and around 25,000 vehicles produced, Subaru stopped production in 1997. 2,478 units are said to have been sold in Europe (in Germany in 1992 at a price of DM 73,530), many of which probably did not survive the scrappage scheme era.
The Subaru was technically interesting. Of course, it had all-wheel drive (although there was also a front-wheel drive version!) and a boxer engine like all Subaru vehicles. In the front of the SVX, however, a 3.3-liter six-cylinder engine with 230 hp was at work, producing an impressive 410 Nm.
However, the unladen weight of over 1600 kg and the exclusively installed four-speed automatic transmission were detrimental to the sportiness.
The two-part side windows remain unique in this price class to this day, and the prototype was presented at motor shows as early as 1989. The Automobil Revue wrote in No. 47 / 1989:
"The body is not only streamlined (the Cd value of the even more sophisticated concept car is 0.27), but also has an original shape. The arrangement of the windows in the light pavilion is unusual. As the flush-mounted and strongly curved side windows can hardly be lowered as a unit, only part of them is mobile, similar to certain solutions in racing cars. The black separating joint has not been kept as thin as possible, but has been incorporated into the overall design."
