We do a lot of research at Subaru,” says Outback car-line manager Peter Tenn. It almost sounds like an apology as he shows his 20th slide of customer-research charts to a crowd of just-post-coffee automotive writers. But given the brand’s continued sales success—Subaru celebrated its 91st consecutive month of yearly month-over-month growth this July—we doubt that it’s going to lay off the research anytime soon. Subaru isn’t interested solely in who its customers are (in the case of the Outback, it’s a 45-year-old married man with a college degree making slightly less than $100,000 a year); it also obsessively researches what those customers want. And what they want is for everything to stay mostly the same.
In the design process for this sixth-generation Outback, Subaru workshopped four different design ideas with potential buyers. And wouldn’t you know it, those consumers liked the one that looks almost exactly like the outgoing model. Even details that Subaru points out as having originated during the redesign process, such as the scalloped black rocker panels meant to evoke the sole of a hiking boot, have roots in the previous gen’s design.
This story is from the October 2019 edition of Car and Driver.
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This story is from the October 2019 edition of Car and Driver.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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