Subaru XV

Never is it pleasurable to open road-test proceedings on a gloomy note, but this week’s subject, the Subaru XV, arrives with its maker flailing for relevancy.

Subaru’s UK market share was just over a tenth of a per cent in 2016, and somehow that fell last year. Consider that the reason you see so few of these star-spangled Japanese cars is that no single model can drag itself into four-figure sales, although business in the brand’s homeland and the USA is much more healthy.

Here, though, it seems the only way is up.

Identifying a route is the difficulty, and so at a time when the Subaru WRX STi, with its rally-soaked heritage, faces a shaky future – one that doesn’t involve UK sales at all – perhaps it’s time to reassess what the definitive Subaru of today actually is. It is a car that almost certainly features a hatchback because, aside from the two-seater Subaru BRZ, whose shape was engineered for the purposes of the near-identical Toyota GT86, every car Subaru now builds does.

Does it have four-wheel drive? Of course it does. Subaru’s Symmetrical All Wheel Drive (SAWD) system first saw action as an optional extra on the Leone Wagon of 1972 – a pioneering development in the world of affordable road cars – and is part of the brand’s genetic code. As to whether it should enjoy a raised ride height, you could argue it either way, but, given current tastes, it wouldn’t do any harm.

The Subaru XV, introduced in 2012 and considerably but discreetly altered for 2018, ticks those boxes.

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