[svxistentialist]

Originally Posted by SubaRyu

Not in the US but SVX was often compared with Eunos Cosmo, Nissan 300ZX, Mitsubishi GTO(3000GT) Toyota Soarer(SC300) in JP. They are high performance, good looking, and expensive. People who thought about buying SVX also thought about those candidates...

Yep, these babies were the natural competitors in Japan, and most likely to have been in the forefront of the minds of the designers as they prepared the SVX for sale in Japan.

When we discuss what are the natural competitors of the SVX I think we have a duty of care to remember that each market was unique, and it would have been partially up to each region's marketing department to decide what specification that car came with, and where they decided to pitch it in their particular market or battlefield.

What Tom says is very true, the US got the cheaper rear clutch driven gearbox. This affected the handling all right, but I strongly suspect it was done as much to keep the cost per unit low, as much as anything else, because relative to the cost of development the SVX price in the USA was a bit of a bargain. You probably think the SVX was expensive when new in the US, but it was double that price in Europe.

Fuji tried in one audacious move to build a car that was a match for Porsches, BMW 8 series coupes and Audis. They failed mainly because the market conditions worsened, but it was a glorious failure. Our SVX is lasting as well as or better than the aforementioned. On top of that the level of engineering and finish is far in front of the high priced German opposition, 17 years on. And we can buy them for buttons.

Joe