[gone-ot]

Originally Posted by niky

A failure of marketing and product planning.

The "flying va-female-genitalia" grille didn't help, obviously, but the problem was that it was too high a jump in price versus other Subarus and wasn't as established or as rugged as competitors.

Once the grille was fixed, it still didn't look the part of the exciting faux-SUV, like the Explorer. Even if it was arguably better. Instead, it was just... bland.

A good product should sell itself, but you've got to give people reason to look at it before you can win them over.

Ford's ill-fated EDSEL suffered from the same social visual-image impression.