(car revving)
- Every once in a while,
we want something just a little bit spicy, a bit unique,
you know, something different.
No longer do we want a 240SX gels, get outta here.
We want a Gloria,
a VIP 4-door saloon to drift
because we're different.
Sometimes we don't want chicken tendies.
we want the fancy buffalo chicken wrap,
which is still kind of basic,
but we'll get over it. And every once in a while,
we don't want to do like a basic ass pier
on old school RuneScape.
We want to build out like a PD pure
and wreck some children in Edgeville
with Derocks or Derocks or Derocks.
There's a lot of arguments in terms of
how to pronunciate things.
So much so that RuneScape
actually made a thing to explain it,
but it's besides the point.
It's an age old argument.
Drop what you think it should be below. Anyway, either way,
whatever it is you want to segue into,
sometimes people just like to be a bit different.
So what happens when you get a car manufacturer
that treats their car production
like you would treat a new dorm room
in the first time you've ever been to college.
Well, welcome to the early nineties or eighties,
depending on where we start the story.
I'm Alex, Alex.Fi on Instagram,
and today we're going to be talking about an odd idea
that actually made it to fruition,
a car that looks dope as hell on Tesla wheels.
And it's a car that everybody thinks about buying
and you read the reviews and then you're like,
eh, maybe not.
Today, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna be talking about
just what happened to the Subaru SVX.
(intense, dramatic music)
And if you haven't yet,
let us know what you think about the Subaru SVX
before we even get into it below.
And if you're looking for after market
wheels, tires, suspension, be sure to hit us up
over at fitmentindustries.com.
I know that you're watching this
and you're like, oh, there's still snow on the ground.
I still got time.
And then the next thing you know,
it's gonna be car show season,
and you're not gonna have any of your (beep) done,
or then you're gonna look at us
wishing that we had something in stock,
but we don't have it anymore
because everybody else already bought their stuff
and you didn't buy your stuff
and things come from Japan
and they take 10 months to get.
Don't blame me.
The Subaru SVX is a bit of an odd duck,
starting with the full name, which is Alcyone.
Alcyone.
- [Automated Voice] Alcyone.
- Which is German for a tree's roots, actually.
If you didn't know that, there's a fun fact for you.
That's actually not true.
That's not even true at all, okay?
But I sounded confident,
and now you've got to think about
if the next thing I say is actually true or not.
It actually referred to the brightest star of
a constellation.
This one. I'm not even going to try saying it.
Stylized in the new Subaru company logo.
Anyway, the actual SVX just stands for Subaru Vehicle Acts.
and was truly Subaru's take on
the luxury and performance market segment
but with a very odd twist.
You see, back in the eighties and nineties
Subaru had a little bit of extra money going on with it.
It had a couple bit of daddy's dollars in the back pocket.
And that person that was giving them the daddy's dunks
was called Fuji heavy industries.
And that was seriously pushing its weight
in terms of manufacturing success
since its upbringing back in 1953.
And for those that don't know Fuji,
they've always been a big player since 1953.
It's been a technological leader
in general motor engineering and design.
And while it was focused on the Subaru rebrand,
it saw enough revenue from its winnings
to kind of double down,
to put a little bit on the double green.
They just wanted to see if it would be fun
to try something different and unique.
They wanted to gamble a little, if you will.
And just see, just maybe,
if the nineties JDM international craze
was worth jumping into
with something a little bit different,
something that you might say has fancy windows.
So when Giorgetto Giugiaro, Giu-
When, when Giorgetto...
- [Automated Voice] Giorgetto Giugiaro.
- When George picked up the pen
to make the most beautiful masterpiece of a Subaru
that's ever been made,
he made a really pretty one, okay?
He made a great looking car.
Now this is really important because good old Georgie
was a pretty big deal.
He was car designer of the century.
He designed camera bodies for Nikon,
the actual design of the Nikon body.
He designed that.
You like Nikon?
Exactly.
The Oregon at the Cathedral of Lusan.
Lusan. Ah, there's so many times I'm gonna get this wrong.
I mean, the dude smells of style
and he was properly good at designing.
And honestly, if you like a design
that features some sort of sloped rear end
with a hard cut undertail,
it's probably designed by this dude from like the fifties
all the way up to the two thousands.
And he has a laundry list of cars that he's helped design,
which we will put right behind me right now.
The car would feature his iconic styling
of the window within another window, window-ception.
And this was the thing that really set the SVX apart
from a design element.
The design though, even with its uniqueness,
would carry some of the same similarities
to the Lamborghini Countach, the DeLorean,
and even the McLaren F1 because you guessed it.
Good old G-Dog was also somebody
that helped design those cars as well.
And everything was on the up and up
until we got to the rest of the car,
because I mean really when you look at just the car
without knowing anything within it,
it's pretty decent looking.
It looks sharp.
It's probably one of the most underdog, like,
good-looking Subaru's out there.
Now look at the headlights.
They're square, they're small,
they're similar to the 240 SX.
They're sharp.
Pushed forward hood that gave it
like a nice aggressive look.
It kind of gave it that look that actually made you feel
like it could go fast.
Now the bumper was looking like
it was gonna eat a small child.
It had multiple bents and protrusions.
It was super sick.
It made it kind of look like
the bottom was fighting off a demon,
top half was looking like a Cadillac,
the flare rear fenders gave it a nice widened stance
and they had taillights.
The taillights pushed up the side of the rear fender,
giving it an elongated look.
It was like the French goddamn kiss of a car design.
It just, it was good.
You put that next to a Subaru WRX.
I'm gonna be honest.
I really do like the SVX a little bit more.
Dual tailpipes.
They only had two tailpipes on a 3.3 liter.
I mean the windows on windows thing.
By all definitions, the man that designed this thing
was the same guy that designed Ferrari's we all love,
and it should have been golden.
It should have done well.
It should have been multiple generations.
So why, just why, did it come and go
faster than a high school fling at a bonfire
after half a bottle of UV Blue?
Why did it just not seem to ever really
kick the can far enough down the road?
Just what exactly happened to the Subaru SVX?
That's a really good question.
It really doesn't make any sense,
but why don't you come along
and we're going to talk about just what risks
you're about to take if you decide to own
this little beautiful fish bowl of a car.
A four year since isn't too long to worry
to give it like too many praises, okay?
And really the initial sticker shock of the car
is what pulled a lot of people away
from actually owning the car way back in the day.
It was $10,000 more than the next Subaru,
which really didn't help much
when Subaru wasn't really known
for being a high scale, high cost car.
And on top of the price,
the cars coming from like,
Nissan with the 300 ZX, Acura with the NSX,
you had Mazda with the RX 70, a Mitsubishi with a 3000 GT,
you had Toyota with the Supra,
and they had way more tech power and capabilities
that Subaru really just didn't keep score.
Like it was focused on an entirely different thing,
and yet it got compared to the market.
So sure, we just said it, it was a luxury coupe thing,
but putting two doors next to two doors,
the competition wasn't exactly easy.
And a lot of people in the good old states
with the US variant saw that.
And in addition, the car had issues
that followed along pretty much everywhere it went,
like wheel bearings, transmission failure.
People blamed it on the weight of the car,
but really it was really fancy engineering and design.
It really put the SVX in a weird position
and Subaru just decided to kind of put it there
and just see what would happen.
Put it on double green,
got red.
Look at its price and what you got too.
I mean, the car is cool.
It came with a naturally aspirated 3.3 liter,
which can be enduring to love nowadays.
But back in the day, it was about 60 to 70 horsepower
underneath the common competition.
And it was a pricey mother(beep).
It was an expensive car, and when putting numbers to paper
against the sports car,
the fact that it didn't really even come
in a manual at the time really didn't help it much either.
What was it competing against?
The answer was nothing.
But it was, and it lost.
The car would do roughly enough
in terms of getting people to buy them at dealerships.
But dealerships were putting out everything
they possibly could to get these cars out of their showroom.
They were doing things like giving away watches.
And if you took a test drive, you get a watch for free.
I mean, these guys were trying everything
to get them out the door,
which actually sounds kind of fancy,
but still it wasn't,
like, it wasn't enough.
And automotive enthusiasts for people like you
and people like me,
it didn't really age like fine wine for a good long time.
It aged like the early two thousands auto flux body kits.
It just kind of looked funky for a really long time.
I would argue up until people just decided that
if you bag and put different wheels on anything,
it'll look good enough.
It really didn't scale enough to a large enough audience
to be loved for Subaru to continue the production.
And when it was looking at the blow up
of world rally championships and the WRX at the time,
really just any other Subaru at the time,
it made the big Fuji ask the question
on if it was even worth continuing
with the backing of the dollar bill to Subaru.
And the answer was, it really wasn't.
And even Subaru knew that.
And even Fuji knew that.
And everybody knew that.
So when it died, everybody was like, oh.
But this is where it gets all weird
because you've probably seen the badass SVX
bagged on Tesla wheels, I think it is.
And it looks great.
The car nowadays is drawing a ton of attention and love
from the community and with a now affordable price tag,
if you can even find one,
people are starting to pick them up again
for their quirkiness and the love of, like,
the feeling and the fleeting pain
of having transmission issues from a Subaru
and the fact that there's no replacement parts,
which you'll get over
because you're supposed to get over it
because you now own the car.
But it does look good.
And there's people over in Japan that are modifying them
and tucking the engine bays
and slamming it on its nuts on BBS wheels
and it looks great.
You just gotta get past the car actually functioning
like a car sometimes.
The SVX could have been a hit.
It was like on the cusp of Lexus,
having a massive breakout with the LS 400
that it probably would have competed with
and done well against.
It was a few years shorter than the NSX entering the world
and showing everyone that a Honda badge
could humble just about everyone really quick.
It was just a few years short of Japan
showing the United States how to make the Jarvis of cars,
which was the technological thing
that was just blowing up in the nineties.
And the SVX was also on the Japanese economy bubble,
which didn't really help it as well.
Everything about it was just a little bit too much,
a little bit too early,
and it was a little bit too expensive.
Its spiked price and lack of understanding
the real benefit of purchase
left it all by itself on an island.
And now there's just a multitude of car enthusiasts
trying to build off meta builds
because it's really interesting.
And one of the cars that makes the cut in that
is the Subaru SVX.
And it's finally starting to shine,
just not literally, because it's still Subaru paint
a little bit.
But hey, you can get it resprayed and it looks awesome.
All right?
And if you do have a modified SVX,
just add it to the gallery so we can see what it looks like.
Especially if it's on aftermarket wheels,
tires, or suspension.
Let us know what you think of what the Subaru SVX
and why you think it went away.
And of course, drop a comment below
on what you'd like to see us talk about next.
If you guys are wondering how to get your stuff faster,
because you're looking to get wheels and tires
as soon as humanly possible,
get it, take a look.
There's like a little blue icon on the website.
Now, get your wheels and tires in 10 days or less.
Let us know what you'd like us to touch on next.
And of course we will see you later.
Peace.
(rock music)