Junkyard Find: 1993 Subaru SVX

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

The Subaru SVX, as I explained in the text of the previous SVX Junkyard Find, is one of those cars with a real-world price tag far, far lower than Internet Car Experts would have you believe. So low, in fact, that it is not at all difficult to find Subaru’s amazing last-gasp-of-80s-silliness car in wrecking yards. Here’s a ’96 I found in Denver a few weeks back.

I think the XT has the more appealingly bewildering Moon Base Japan controls, but the big 3.3 liter boxer six beats the XT6’s engine.

This car is pretty clean for a junkyard resident, and it ought to be with just 117K on the clock.

Subarus have become more reliable since the heyday of 80s/90s design madness, but they’re lost a lot of character on the way.






Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Haakman Haakman on Jun 24, 2012

    One of my all-time favorite magazine stories (from Car Stereo Review, March/April 1993 issue) described a trip in a new SVX from the US into Canade to see a Tragically Hip concert. My memory is fuzzy on it but I do recall a prominent feature of the story being something called the Very Necessary Speedometer test. It was amusing to my 14-year-old self anyway. Anybody have that old rag stashed away?

  • LOST Rogue 89 LOST Rogue 89 on Jul 31, 2015

    Where is this at I'm 17 and need parts for my svx

  • Mebgardner I owned 4 different Z cars beginning with a 1970 model. I could already row'em before buying the first one. They were light, fast, well powered, RWD, good suspenders, and I loved working on them myself when needed. Affordable and great styling, too. On the flip side, parts were expensive and mostly only available in a dealers parts dept. I could live with those same attributes today, but those days are gone long gone. Safety Regulations and Import Regulations, while good things, will not allow for these car attributes at the price point I bought them at.I think I will go shop a GT-R.
  • Lou_BC Honda plans on investing 15 billion CAD. It appears that the Ontario government and Federal government will provide tax breaks and infrastructure upgrades to the tune of 5 billion CAD. This will cover all manufacturing including a battery plant. Honda feels they'll save 20% on production costs having it all localized and in house.As @ Analoggrotto pointed out, another brilliant TTAC press release.
  • 28-Cars-Later "Its cautious approach, which, along with Toyota’s, was criticized for being too slow, is now proving prescient"A little off topic, but where are these critics today and why aren't they being shamed? Why are their lunkheaded comments being memory holed? 'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.' -Orwell, 1984
  • Tane94 A CVT is not the kiss of death but Nissan erred in putting CVTs in vehicles that should have had conventional automatics. Glad to see the Murano is FINALLY being redesigned. Nostalgia is great but please drop the Z car -- its ultra-low sales volume does not merit continued production. Redirect the $$$ into small and midsize CUVs/SUVs.
  • Analoggrotto Another brilliant press release.
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