The Subaru BRZ has always looked out of place on the Subaru lot. We appreciate any attempt to bring another affordable 2-door sports car to American shoppers. But a Subaru sports car should probably look a little rough — a combination of boxy and sleek that suggests all four wheels are gripping and as ready to grip dirt as blacktop.
The BRZ — lovely little thing — has always been more Toyota than Subaru and looks more at home next to the Supra than the WRX.
Say “Subaru Sports Car,” and the Subaru Sport Mobility Concept is closer to what we imagine.
Subaru revealed the SMC at the Japan Mobility Show today — the event formerly known as the Tokyo Motor Show. It appeared alongside a Subaru-branded flying car, which implies the company isn’t using this year’s show to showcase things it expects to sell soon. This may be no more than a design sketch meant to stretch the minds of Subaru designers.
But we’d love to see it in a showroom someday. It would fit the Subaru ethos.
Details? We have almost nothing for you. Subaru says the Sport Mobility Concept “is based on the concept of a driver at the center, controlling all four wheels at will.” Revolutionary.
It’s electric, Subaru says, and offers “a low seating position.”
Its electric nature means it’s almost certainly all-wheel drive, and we think designers did an outstanding job taking the boxy Subaru design theme that suggests the outdoors and bringing it to the sleek realm of the sports coupe.
But Subaru doesn’t suggest this is anything more than a concept for now.
