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I'm a pretty big fan of superchargers, but I'm at odds with the idea of doing it to an SVX. I don't think it suits the car. A blower just screams "drag race me!" That's just not what kind of car the SVX is. The SVX is very much a touring car. It longs to cruise down the highway at 100mph. I think just about everybody knows what I'm talking about when I say that it just begs to go a little faster. You can feel it gently tugging at the reigns.
For the very same reason, I think there's something else very well suited to the SVX: The transmission. Yes, the unreliable, slow-to-accelerate, automatic transmission really feels appropriate for the SVX. It has some obvious inadequacies, but the one thing it does very well is touring. You can be passing traffic at 2500 RPM and should you need a little more torque, the lockup disengages and at a mild 2900 RPM it pulls even harder.
To me, putting in a five-speed transmission and / or a blower really transforms the car. It's an awkward transformation though, because the car wasn't meant to be a fire-breathing, American iron-crushing, quarter mile menace. In my opinion, the perfect SVX would have about 350 turbocharged horses, and a four or five speed automatic transmission built to take it. That seems to me what the designers dreamt of.
The way I see it, the alternative is to supercharge it, put in a manual transmission, milk 400 plus horsepower out of it, and turn it into a tire-disposal machine. It's gotta be one way or the other. Luxury touring, or track demon. Pick one. I think the five-speed conversions are neat, and the modest horsepower increases are also pretty cool, but the end result seems like a car with an identity crisis. It's like a Ferrari with a bench seat and trailer hitch, or a Jaguar with NOS and a wheelie bar. Either of those things are certainly cool, but it seems like it ought to be against the rules. In some way it feels like it upsets the balance of the universe, disrupts the Zen of automobiledom, or throws off my groove, heaven forbid.
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