Hey guys welcome back to the channel and today we are doing another deep dive video on the weirdest Subaru sports car ever made! I hope you enjoy and if you do, please be sure to like, comment another video you wanna see, and subscribe for more!!
Foreign the 90s were a weird time for car culture we had some of the most insane cars to ever come from japan during that time but we also had tons of experiments and really no design to go off of like in the 80s when everybody liked boxy things i feel like the 90s was almost like a free trial to the 2000s so it only makes sense that there would be tons of cars
That would fall flat on their face and subaru would make one so bizarre that people were literally too scared of it hi my name is mark rhoden and this is the deep dive on the subaru svs the year is 1989 you are just a young lad going to the tokyo auto show to see all the wonderful new cars that come from japan a young company called subaru hadn’t released something
Worth talking about for quite some time now and they were really in their prime in terms of rally racing too so you knew that it was only a matter of time before they would wow the world once again so you sprint your little booty over to the subaru booth and on your way over there you hear all these people saying something about weird windows and futuristic design
When you finally get over there you can’t believe your eyes resting on the pedestal just circling around in all of its glory is the subaru svx this little subaru sports car looked weird but interesting it had an incredibly aggressive front end but the rear was kind of more squared off the windows had windows in them which at the time made no sense and to be honest
It still makes no sense as of today but most importantly this was a sports car and it was coming from subaru and you couldn’t be happier the torque i don’t know what that means but i like it tell me it’s built like a subaru i don’t want any more mechanic friends i have enough friends too many friends fast forward three years to 1992 and the svx would be released to
The public in all of its weird glory and the reviews were very mixed to say the least you see what subaru was trying to do with the svx is make something look like a supercar but be a sports car and when that happens most times they kind of don’t do that well i mean look at look at the solstice guys all right that thing didn’t really do that great the iconic window
Within a window design that the svx has was actually just due to the designer’s previous designs his name is georgetto georgario i’m sorry if i mispronounced that and he’s worked at a towel design who was a company that has designed some of the most important cars in history a couple of those being the lamborghini countach or the dmc delorean both cars that featured
Window within a window designs so naturally the design carried over to the svx and even though this trend was interesting it was mainly you is for saving weight within these incredibly powerful supercars so there was honestly no real need for it in just a normal sports car unfortunately the designers didn’t see that though and they gave it the window anyways which
Is part of the reason this car was not very loved by critics the window was just a hassle it was way too small and even though it was very different it just made the all-around experience of owning the car a little bit worse different doesn’t always mean better but hey at least they had the rest of the look so the make up for it right well kinda most people agreed
That the front end of this car looked amazing but once you got towards the rear it was once again a very questionable design the wheel wells for the rear looked a little too low like my grades in high school and the rear window just didn’t flow all that well into the trunk either which is a shame because the front end looked great and the taillights and the rear
Bumper paired with the spoiler actually really worked well together but everything else on the rear just didn’t fit now obviously this is a subaru so you can bet your sweet bippy that they put a damn horizontally opposed engine in this car and it was something completely new for subaru to do usually as we all know subarus have flat 4 motors with a nice turbo on it
On the performance models at least and despite the head gasket issues that every flat motor is going to experience they were incredibly built motors but before a time where we had all these wonderful ejs from subaru they were experimenting in the damn svx was a huge experiment it was like frankenstein’s monster the russian sleep experiment which by the way don’t
Look up what the russian sleep experiment is it’s freaking horrifying anyways they wanted to see if they could build a six-cylinder flat motor and while the svx would be the lab rat that they would put it in they called it the eg33 which internally is the same as the ej22 that came in the impreza’s outbacks and legacies of the 90s this motor was pretty damn good as
We all know people love building up those old imprezas for some cheap power the eg33 however was a monster of a subaru motor at that time it was more powerful and well built than anything else in the subaru family so far and it was great it was a 3.3 liter flat 6 and it managed to make a very nice 231 horsepower which yes as we all know is not very great nowadays
But back in the beginning of the 90s that’s pretty impressive it was literally too powerful for its own good though because since it had more power than subaru had seen before it had to be paired with an automatic transmission since subaru didn’t think that any of their manuals would be capable of handling the power which as we all know people don’t really care
Too much for automatics in the car community so that definitely didn’t help with sales and public figures in true subaru fashion this car was of course all-wheel drive and as we all know subaru knows how to make a damn good all-wheel drive system they gave it a center differential which back in the 90s was pretty impressive however just like every cool car to come
From japan we didn’t get that in america no survey we got a much more watered down version of this all-wheel drive system that didn’t have the center differential and the reason once again is because of pesky little emission standards back in the 90s cars didn’t have obd ports so what they would do is they would put cars on dinos in order to get the emissions
Tests done but this advanced all-wheel drive system on the svx would not allow the car to go into two-wheel drive it was locked at all-wheel drive at all times and we only had two wheel drive dinos so that meant that they couldn’t go on the dinos which meant that they couldn’t pass emissions which meant that we once again didn’t get the good stuff but i will say
The all-wheel drive system that we did get is still pretty damn impressive now with all these added performance parts on this brand new subaru sports car you would expect it to take part in some form of motorsport right well it didn’t once again motorsport relies on building hype around certain cars and then showing the world how great they can be so people want to
Buy them that’s why there’s that saying that you win on monday and you sell or you win on sunday and sell on monday because people are going to see a car do incredibly well and they’re gonna want to buy it but sadly there was never enough hype around the svx in order to even bring it to motorsport i mean they only ended up selling a combined total of 25 000 models
Through its five year lifespan which is not good at all i think antonio oh my god nowadays sure they’re starting to get a little bit more love but they didn’t receive that love back when they were actually getting sold so subaru kind of well gave up on it they used the technology and research that they learned with the svx and they put it on much more successful
Models like the impreza or legacy and to be honest with you i can’t blame them why would you keep a car alive when it’s just costing you money to do so so they killed the svx and never brought it back so here we are in 2022 and this subaru that never got a chance to shine is finally being picked up on the internet and due to people like me and doug demaro making
Videos on how much we love them they’re finally starting to get known not loved but known and sure the svx wasn’t great and sure it looked a bit odd especially with its weird windows and quarter panels but there’s something so special about a six-cylinder subaru sports car with only two doors that you can’t help but be intrigued about this car i’m not telling you
To go out and buy an svx as a matter of fact i don’t think this car deserves to be picked up by any joe schmo who won’t give it the time and attention that it’s going to need all i’m doing is letting you know about a forgotten japanese legend and hoping that maybe hopefully i’ll help a young kid find a new dream car to look forward to owning at one point because
In my opinion the subaru svx deserves much more love foreign foreign that is the end of today’s deep dive on the subaru svx let me know what other cars you want to see me do a deep dive on in the comments below i think the next one’s going to be on the scion tc i know it’s weird but i wanted to do it and then i don’t remember what the other one’s gonna
Be but let me know what you guys want to see for deep dive videos in the comments below i really appreciate all the support we’ve been getting recently on this channel a little bit of a uh talk i’ve been sick recently so i haven’t been like working on it that well i’m sorry but i’m finally getting coming coming back right i’ve been revived so the videos are going
To be every day again we’re going to be working on the channel every every damn day i’m sorry that you guys missed like a couple days this week i was just so sick i couldn’t freaking talk i still it’s hard still to talk like for a long time it could happen to take breaks making this video and like catch my breath and like right now it’s only been like 45 seconds
In my i’m feeling my throat getting sore but either way i appreciate all the support you guys have given me i love you guys let me know a little deep down if you want to see let me know what other videos you want to see and uh dasvatania have a nice night
Transcribed from video
Subaru SVX Deep Dive: The Weirdest Subaru Ever Made By Mark Roden