Subaru, a tiny, conservative Japanese brand, is about to build a big, brash, American-style SUV. It’s either an exercise in kaizen — slow, steady improvement — or a complete loss of cool.
To be sure, the market is there. Americans are ditching their sedans for SUVs at a dizzying pace. Subaru, however, has become one of the hottest car companies in the country by soberly keeping production below demand and making a few great cars, none of which is a traditional SUV per se. In other words, a supersized Subaru could be a profit machine or an exercise fraught with distraction.
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