Posted Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 11:21pm
The XV is supposed to be a new type of car for Subaru, but is probably more accurately thought of as a reincarnation of one of the company’s old favourites. It’s a crossover, a category of vehicle that straddles the boundary between normal saloons and estates on the one hand and more serious off-road vehicles on the other. Since Subaru has been more or less unique in equipping the majority of its cars with all-wheel drive, it is well qualified to develop such products and the XV can be seen as a spiritual successor to the second-generation Forester produced by the company between 2003 and 2008, which was also based on the Impreza chassis and had a raised estate car body. The latest version of the Forester is a much more orthodox SUV-style vehicle and that left a gap in the Subaru range for a small-to-medium-sized crossover which the XV now fills
