Product history
A Giugiaro-designed flat-six halo car Subaru couldn't sell.
The 1991-1996 SVX paired Giorgetto Giugiaro's "window-in-window" canopy doors with a 3.3L EG33 flat-six — Subaru's only sustained swing at a genuine flagship halo coupe. It's a useful case study in how an engineering-forward, distinctively-styled car can still fail commercially: Subaru projected roughly 10,000 US sales a year and got about half that in the best year, and multiple independent retrospectives converge on similar causes even though the core "per-car loss" figure hasn't been traced to a primary financial disclosure.
An engine that breaks Subaru's own pattern, not its own layout rule
The EG33 3.3L flat-six is still technically a boxer engine in the literal engineering sense — the real departure is cylinder count and displacement (six rather than Subaru's typical four), not the horizontally-opposed layout itself. The SVX was also automatic-transmission-only, reportedly because Subaru had no manual transmission rated for the EG33's torque at the time — a claim not yet independently cross-checked against a period road test.
Projected 10,000 a year, sold about half
Subaru projected roughly 10,000 US sales per year; actual first-full-year (1992) US sales were roughly 5,000 and declined afterward. Of 24,379 total worldwide units built, 14,257 went to the US — well over half of total production, even as the car sold far below expectations there.
A repeated number, not yet traced to its source
A widely-cited "~$3,000 lost per US-market SVX sold" figure appears consistently across six independent-seeming retrospectives (SlashGear, Curbside Classic, DrivenToWrite, Jalopnik, autoevolution, and others), but none of them were fully read in this pass and none trace back to a primary financial disclosure — it may be a single retrospective estimate that has simply been repeated by outlets that are not independent of one another, and is preserved here as reported rather than confirmed.