I’m sure that at least 80% of readers are going to roll their eyes, mutter something that involves my name, the phrase “crap car” (or something like it) and move on, and that’s quite fine with me. Here’s what I’m seeing: you take a car nobody really knows what to do with, in this case Subaru’s SVX coupe, and you give it a point and purpose: here, in what looks to be the parking lot of a ski resort (the snow machines make me think that), the SVX’s odd proportions and flat-six exhaust note are forgotten in the beauty of watching an all-wheel-drive car with power blow snow donuts and drift more gracefully than a twirling ballerina hippo in Fantasia.

The SVX isn’t a bad car, but it is a strange one. Subaru decided to continue on with the luxury coupe deal, but instead of continuing on with the XT’s strange doorstop shape, they plumped the body up nicely and made it into a rather roomy grand tourer. They then decided that DeLorean-like half-windows, a non-turbocharged flat six and an automatic transmission only policy were great ideas. Personally, I’ve wanted to see some STI tuning tricks and a turbo work some magic on the 3.3 six and a manual transmission swap, but I wouldn’t be hurt to see an LS and a six-speed in here either. Maybe then you wouldn’t need the snow to have four-wheeled fun.