At the official presentation of the 2017 Subaru Impreza, a vehicle with an all-new platform that will underpin many of the cars the oddball Japanese carmaker will produce into the next decade, there was lots of talk of the new continuously variable transmission (CVT), which gives the car highway efficiency of nearly 40 m.p.g. There was much discussion of the upgraded interior materials and smoothed out exterior styling that will help to aim the marque further upscale. And there was a lengthy discussion of how frequently and how far off-road owners typically take their Subarus—the new Impreza even arrives with standard bird identification app loaded into its infotainment system. But there was no mention of autonomous driving.
“Officially, Subaru is as confident as every other maker that snoozing and driving is but a skip away,” says Michael McHale, the brand’s director of corporate communications, with his signature dry British wit. “So we are developing technology and plan to debut a semi-autonomous vehicle by 2020. Lots of Japanese companies are preparing tech debuts around the Olympics that year.”
If McHale seems resigned, or detached, maybe he is, and maybe Subaru can be. The brand is a huge success story in the American market, having tripled sales in the past eight years—from 200,000 cars per year to 600,000, according to the company. It has gone from being a niche brand beloved by coastal intellectuals to becoming the ninth largest carmaker in the U.S., selling as many vehicles in 2016 as domestic stalwarts Buick and Dodge combined.
It accomplished this through good timing, and a dose of sharp strategy. Noting that the market was gravitating toward the category of high-riding, car-based, hatchbacks now known as “Crossovers” that Subaru had in large part created with its signature Outback station wagon, the brand amped up the size of their vehicles to match more typical American tastes, and moved slightly upscale without losing focus on its utilitarian roots.
It thus came to occupy a space vacated by brands like Volvo, Saab, and Audi—an affordable, durable, and safe imported option for folks who disliked the brand baggage of the premium carmakers, but desired the ability to schlep a lot of physical baggage, sure-footedly, with its signature all-wheel-drive. Customers flocked. And remained flocking. Subaru buyers are by far the most loyal of consumers of mainstream automotive brands, returning for repeat purchases at rates double many competitors, according to Subaru. The marque acquires five new customers from other brands for every one that leaves.
Unlike other brands that have watered down their core mission in the quest to increase volume (BMW comes to mind, with the softening of its strict Ultimate Driving Machine enthusiasm in favor of more luxurious ride, and more luxury sales), Subaru has succeeded by becoming more itself. Unlike many purchasers of crossovers, Subaru buyers actually use their vehicles’ all-wheel-drive capabilities and cavernous capacities to go adventuring. Look around on your favorite highways or back roads and count the proportion of Subarus with some kind of active accoutrement—bike, kayak, surfboard, cargo carrier—on their roof racks.
This kind of active do-it-yourself-ism translates not just into where owners drive, but how; the brand sells one of the highest proportions of cars with manual transmissions of any in the American market. This sincerity and lack of pretension gives Subaru the positioning of an understated but well constructed near-luxury heritage item: the Classic LL Bean Norweigian Crewneck sweater of the automotive world. Autonomy would seemingly fit into this delightfully anachronistic paradigm about as well as a levitating duck boot.
“When looking at it from buyer base that Subaru has, and the image they portray, autonomy is not really in-line,” says senior analyst Ivan Drury, from auto industry research firm Edmunds. “For a brand like Subaru, which is so outdoorsy and rugged, autonomy seems totally counterintuitive. For someone who wants to drive off road, it’s completely against the idea of the brand, it wouldn’t be a selling point.”
But can brands like this otherwise survive in an imminently autonomous future? They can if that future doesn’t arrive right away or all at once, an outcome that seems increasingly likely. It is worth remembering that even as the post-WWII economic and automotive boom occurred, milk was still being delivered by horse and carriage in many places well into the 1950s. Perhaps Subaru will be able to maintain its DIY position in the slowly developing world of self-driving cars, remaining the vehicle of choice for people who want to exert choices in the how and where of automobile operation. Even when all of the roads are Google mapped and geo-fenced, there will likely be people who want to escape from these constraints, or drive off-road. And when the time for mandatory autonomy comes, if it does, perhaps Subaru can just buy an off-the-shelf autonomy system from Google or Apple, the same way they’re purchasing the new navigation system in the Impreza from Magellan, and smartphone pairing from Apple CarPlay.
“If you look at technological j-curves and the proliferation downward in technology—the way things filter down into mass market—technologies that were surprising and rare when they were originally released, like parallel parking assist on the Lexus LS, are now available on low-end Ford Focuses,” Drury says. “By the time these things fully get vetted, you should be able to readily add it to almost any car. Subaru seems to be taking the position, as these fast leaps in technology, of letting early adopters flirt with those technologies and all the hassles, and then mainstream buyers reap the benefits way down the line.”
This makes sense for an analog brand known for leading the way off the road. Perhaps when the car can drive itself silently to the marsh at dusk, just at the moment when you can paddle out to see the egrets feed, Subaru drivers will be ready to take the autonomous leap.