It’s easy to forget what a big deal the Subaru Outback was back in the 1990s. Put simply, it was an all-new way to look at a mid-market family car. Here was the perfect thing to take your family camping, conquering backroads and trails, and it wasn’t an SUV, it was a station wagon, a body type that had already been falling out of favor for the SUV at this point.
Rugged station wagons weren’t totally unheard of then, and they’re not now, but the Volvo V90 Cross-Country starts at an MSRP of $66,900 for the 2026 model year. The Toyota Crown Signia and Kia EV6 could be counted as more affordable wagons, but they don’t come close to the Outback’s ground clearance and all-terrain capability. Looking at it that way, nobody’s selling a real Outback competitor on the US market, but that’s not for lack of trying.
It Was Easier Than Building An SUV
1997 Subaru Outback side angle in whiteComplete Automotive
The mid-1990s was the age of the Ford Explorer, the Toyota RAV4, and the Jeep Grand Cherokee. If you didn’t have an SUV in your lineup, you might as well not have bothered selling to the American family market in the first place. Subaru of America didn’t have an SUV. And their sales numbers were hurting as a result.
Lacking the budget and resources to develop an all-new SUV from the ground up, Subaru went digging through their existing lineup to find something that could serve as a starting point for something SUV-ish, if not technically an SUV. The team went with the Subaru Legacy, a mid-size available in a sedan or wagon build.
1995 Subaru Outback
Engine
2.2-Liter NA 4-Cylinder
Power
135 hp
Torque
140 lb-ft
Transmission
4-Speed Automatic or 5-Speed Manual
Drivetrain
All-Wheel Drive
Ground Clearance
7.3 Inches
Subaru lifted the suspension from 5.9 inches to 7.3 inches, added body cladding, and hired Crocodile Dundee himself, Paul Hogan, to help them sell the car in North America in a series of action-packed commercials boasting “more headroom than a Cherokee, and the ground clearance of an Explorer” all in a vehicle that drives more like a car than it does like a truck. So you had a Japanese car with Australian-themed branding selling to American drivers.
Subaru Had A Hit On Its Hands
In the words of Subaru of America’s senior vice president, Tim Mahoney, the Outback “saved our company”. The “world’s first sports utility wagon” sold 14,805 units in 1995, then it sold 48,208 units in 1996, and it never dipped below 54,000 annual sales for the rest of the decade.
One thing you won’t find in the automotive industry: a success story with no bandwagon jumpers. You can patent designs, you can patent inventions, but it’s hard to patent an idea, and this was one worth borrowing.
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The Ford Santa Fe?
Ford
If you had to name a mid-90s sedan or wagon with the potential to compete with the Outback, given a few tweaks, the Ford Taurus might be the first model that comes to mind, right? Ford thought so, too, and they went to work developing the Ford Santa Fe concept vehicle. This was in 1997, a few years before Hyundai would use the name for their own compact crossover.
1997 Ford Santa Fe Concept
Engine
3.4-Liter NA 8-Cylinder
Power
235 hp
Torque
230 lb-ft
Transmission
4-Speed Automatic
Drivetrain
All-Wheel Drive
Ground Clearance
7.2 Inches
Like the Legacy Outback, the Taurus Santa Fe would have shared more in common with the car it was based on than not, this being the Ford Taurus SHO. In addition to adding 2.5 inches of lift to the suspension, Ford also stretched the track out a couple of inches, and added plastic wheel arches with trail-ready rubber lining.
Ford
The wagon had the look and feel of a true off-roader, with brush guards on the bumpers, metal mesh on the air intakes and grille, and the Santa Fe was previewed with an aerodynamic cargo carrier strapped to the cargo rack, situated over a generously sized sunroof for taking in the scenery. The pièce de résistance would be a clamshell-style tailgate with a spare tire kit mounted on the back, because what off-roader is complete without it?
The Santa Fe Wasn’t Ford’s Only Shot At The Outback
1997 Mercury L’AttitudeFord
The Ford Santa Fe was styled to out-Outback the Outback, with a deliberately clunky, chunky look that seemed to howl “look at me, I’m an off-roader!” If that was a bit too showy for your tastes, Ford was also working on the Mercury L’Attitude. L’Attidue, now there’s name that’s maybe a bit too clever for its own good, but the vehicle itself was the toned-down version of the concept.
The L’Attitude was based on the Sable, which was itself a Taurus derivative, and it would have featured the same performance specs as the Santa Fe, being driven by the same V8 motor paired to the same all-wheel drive system. It just featured more conservative styling.
In fact, it hardly looked any different from a standard Sable wagon at a glance, save for the new HID headlights, the lifted suspension, and the rear-mounted spare tire. The L’Attitude would have been just as trail-capable as the Santa Fe, but it communicated that with a quiet confidence, contrasting the Santa Fe’s chest-thumping showboating.
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Why Didn’t Ford Push Their Sports Utility Wagons Through To Production?
We think it would be pretty cool to drive an off-road Taurus SHO wagon, but you hardly need to guess why the Santa Fe and L’Attitude didn’t fit into Ford’s market plans at the time. The Ford Explorer was selling around 400,000 units a year in the second half of the 1990s. The full-size Ford Expedition was selling around a quarter of a million units a year in that same time period. Ford didn’t need to worry about breaking into the off-road family vehicle segment, they owned it.
Remember that the Outback had been kind of a MacGyver-style fix for Subaru. The automaker had been falling behind the times without an SUV, but they couldn’t afford to build one, so they built an almost-SUV out of the Subaru Legacy. It was a clever fix to a tricky problem. A problem that Ford didn’t have to worry about.
Everyone Wanted A Piece Of The Sports Utility Wagon Market
Pontiac Aztek Concept Side ViewPontiac
It wasn’t just Ford kicking around the idea of competing directly with Subaru. Toyota actually had an off-road wagon of their own, the Mark II Qualis, based on the Camry wagon. The wagon packed a 200-hp V6 paired to a four-wheel drive system. This one was a Japan-exclusive, though, and the 4×4 system only went into effect when you needed some extra grip. Subaru’s symmetrical AWD was light-years ahead of the Mark II’s.
The Pontiac Aztek, a touchstone of early-00s quirkiness, could easily be seen as an attempt to take a bite out of Subaru’s market share. It didn’t quite turn out that way for the ill-fated Walter Whitemobile, but you can see the Subaru influence all over the weird-looking family vehicle.
The closest thing the Outback has ever had to a direct competitor would have to be the Volvo V70 Cross Country, or XC70, being a lifted, off-road-capable version of the V70 wagon, with standard all-wheel drive, plastic off-road cladding, and a 2.4-liter turbo-five generating 190 hp. The XC70 is reportedly coming back to the market after a decade-long hiatus, but it looks like it’s being relaunched as an SUV.
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Is The Outback Still A Wagon?
2025 Subaru Outback WildernessSubaru
The Outback has always blurred the line between wagon and SUV. Heck, that was Subaru’s intention from the start. But the 2026 redesign has some drivers saying that it may be time to admit that the Outback is just another SUV now. Let’s take a look at the new Outback’s physical dimensions, for instance.
Subaru Outback Physical Dimensions
2025
2026
Width
74.2 Inches
74 Inches
Height
66.4 Inches
67.5 Inches
Length
191.9 Inches
191.7 Inches
Wheelbase
108.1 Inches
108.1 Inches
The 2026 Outback stands barely an inch taller than the 2025 model, and it’s actually a hair shorter and narrower. But if you look at the vehicle in profile, it just doesn’t look like a wagon anymore.
However you want to classify it, we wouldn’t bet against the Outback having another strong sales year once the 2026 model hits the market later this year.
Sources: Subaru, Ford, Ford-Taurus.org.
