Ah, the Italians. When in doubt, that cherished Italian maxim goes, design something beautiful. If you can’t be bothered to come up with anything beautiful, it continues, then at least design something desperately weird and pawn it off on someone else.
The SVX was most definitely a case of the latter. Subaru’s most
distinctive car—and considering the company gave birth to the 356cc 360
and the three-cylinder Justy, that’s saying a lot—came from the pen of
legendary Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. Yep, the same man who
gave us the BMW M1, the Mark I Volkswagen Golf, and the Maserati Ghibli
also gave us this wacky-windowed wonder. Perhaps the lunch menu that day
included a bit too much grappa.
The SVX was intended to be the car on which the “new” Subaru would be
built, a revolutionary achievement that banished all thoughts of the
marque’s often quirky past. A 230-hp, 3.3-liter, 24-valve flat-six lived
under the hood, and a highly evolved, electronically managed
all-wheel-drive system put power to the ground. Four-wheel steering was
available in Japan, and Giugiaro’s sweeping lines resulted in a drag
coefficient of just 0.29. Unfortunately, tech wizardry wasn’t enough to
overcome awkward styling and a high (almost $25,000 in 1992) price, and
sales never took off. The SVX was a good car dragged down into
floptastic floppiness by the hubris of its maker.
No comments:
Post a Comment