Yahoo Autos Subarus Aren't Weird Anymore
The 1968 Subaru 360 looked like a booger on furniture casters. But Subaru grew beyond that to create un-sober vehicles like the 1978 BRAT trucklet that was only ever seen in the drive-thru at Taco Bell, the 1985 XT coupe that was apparently styled using a cardboard refrigerator carton and Duck Tape by an actual duck, and the spacey 1991 SVX thing optimized for operation among the sulfuric acid clouds of the Venusian atmosphere.
Oh, how I miss weird Subies.
Subaru's latest is the 2019 Ascent, an enormous three-row crossover that's virtually indistinguishable from all the other three-row crossovers. It's the biggest Subaru ever-not just an Outback but a full Australia.
The Ascent has a turbocharged flat-four engine under its hood, but that unique design isn't exploited in any significant way. The nose is an enormous box fronted by a boxy grille that's dragging along another big box. The whole thing feels market-tested, focus-grouped, and conventional-wisdom doomed to clog up America's landscape like Starbucks stores and $25-an-hour rub joints. It may as well be a Honda Pathfinder, Toyota Explorer, Chevrolet Highlander, Nissan Traverse, or Ford Pilot.
Remember Subaru's previous big crossover? The goonie 2006 B9 Tribeca? Yeah, Subaru has forgotten it, too.
The problem is that doing what every other manufacturer does is working for Subaru. This past September was Subaru of America's best sales month ever. According to Automotive News, sales were up a solid 3.5-percent to an amazing 57,044 units. That makes 82 straight months of year-over-year sales gains for Subaru. Included in that total were, in only the model's fourth month on the market, 5839 Ascents.
Subaru's best seller was the smaller Forester crossover with 13,453 finding buyers in September. And the all-new 2019 Forester, straining to be at least as conventional and boring as its big brother, is arriving in showrooms now. Subaru dealers are shopping for new vacation homes and adding more boats to their personal navies.
Subaru was a niche brand not that long ago. And that led it to take chances. Not just in offering unique engineering like all-wheel drive on all its vehicles, but in brilliant marketing to underserved markets like the gay community. Now, well, Subaru is mainstream. Right there with Toyota and Pizza Hut.
There's a relentless logic to Subaru's embrace of vehicular orthodoxy. Cars that please most of the people most of the time are cars that sell. But Subie is playing a dangerous game too; relying on the goodwill established by all the tie-dyed goofball machines it has sold during its first 50 years in America. There may come that moment in the not too distant future when consumers look at Subaru and don't see anything there but Nissan with an odd exhaust note.
Maybe more than even it realizes, Subaru needs to keep cars like the obsessive-compulsive near-rally-car WRX STi and the still wonderful rear-drive BRZ sport coupe around to remain connected with its eccentric, and all kinds of wonderful, past. Because what can't go on forever, won't.
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