#subaruxt

HiFi

wifey won Christmas this year.  

my beloved wedge is a year or four before CD players in cars became a thing - come to think of it, 1986 is about the time I spent several hundred dollars on a Yamaha CD player for a home system, having a badass stereo in the dorm much more important than studying and preparing for a well paying future.  or so my dad argued over more than one heated phone call.

so yeah, no CD player in the Subie - but a fairly deluxe factory cassette deck with auto reverse, multiple speakers, and a burly twenty watts per channel proclaimed proudly on the faceplate.  one big issue, I was only able to scrounge up three or four cassettes around the house.  

my favorite, Bad Company’s title album, was played so often Paul Rodgers might not’ve been able to get enough of my love, but I was getting over him in a big way.

so Les gifted me the luxury of variety.  she scoured the local used music hole in the wall, selecting a wide swath of my favorite artists and soundtracks.  this, I’d meant to do myself for months but always managed to forget or punt.

wedged

Alcyone, the brightest star in the Pleiades, or more importantly in our case - the sportiest Subaru you could buy from 1985-1997.  how I’ve come to own nice clean examples of both the early and late model is something that’s happened though I can’t explain exactly how.

you’d think having two cars and a Toyota truck would go against every minimalist bone in my body.  I the person that can’t wrap my head around more than one or two cameras at a time.

perhaps the fact that my three cars sum total still falls well short of a new RAV, or pragmatically 20-30 year old cars are by their nature due for unforeseen maintenance issues, stacking my deck against old man reliability - who knows, or really cares.  I’m having a great time cycling through my mini fleet depending on which steed is convenient and / or gassed up... 

out of the three my favorite is the wedgy little XT above.  the super funky Atari looking dash, airplane inspired controls, and ‘just peppy enough’ engine all tip the scale counterbalancing almost non-existent parts and a couple dubious design choices.

driving home from shooting pictures on a glorious October evening, I was buzzing along enjoying some Bad Co. - one of my two cassettes, when it struck me, this is the car the VW bug would’ve turned into had the concept evolved with parameters other than simplicity and cost.  the flat four boxer sounds and feels like a much more powerful VW engine, while the car has the same light driving feel I remember enjoying with the beetle.  

The Subaru XT, AKA The Wedge, 80's Cool!