How The Hideous Subaru B9 Tribeca May Have Gotten Its Emergency Facelift From Saab

The emergency refresh is something automakers never want to do. Sometimes, like with the 2013 Honda Civic, it’s to upgrade a model that feels otherwise a bit cheap. However, occasionally, styling is just a little too bold for consumers. These days, if you walk into a Subaru dealership looking for a perfectly inoffensive three-row crossover, the Ascent fits that bill perfectly. Hell, Subaru’s offered reasonably anonymous seven-seat crossovers for 16 years, but it wasn’t always that way. When the 2006 Subaru B9 Tribeca launched, it was, um, polarizing.

The B9 Tribeca was Subaru’s first shot at a three-row crossover for the U.S. market. Powered initially by a three-liter EZ30 flat-six engine and spinning all four wheels through a five-speed automatic, this new-for-’06 crossover was meant to compete with models like the Toyota Highlander and Honda Pilot in the burgeoning three-row crossover arena. Unfortunately, in such a conservative segment, safe styling sells, and Subaru did anything but play it safe.

For instance, Jalopnik called the B9 Tribeca’s face the “flying-vagina front end,” and SFGate called the crossover “go-through-anything-but-ugly.” If you think that’s mean, The Truth About Cars wrote:

Without any prompting whatsoever, my 11-year-old daughter took one look at the new Subaru B9 Tribeca and said ‘ew’. And there you have it. Scooby’s first-ever SUV is an irredeemably gruesome beast whose design should have been aborted a femtosecond after conception.

Holy shit, they absolutely bodied this thing. Yeah, the grille of the 2006 Impreza just didn’t scale up to three-row crossover proportions well, and Subaru needed to fix it, fast.

Emergency facelifts take time and cost tons of money, so for a relatively small company like Subaru to change not just injection-molded plastic parts, but stampings and incredibly expensive lighting assemblies after just two years, it just makes you wonder how they did it. Well, it turns out that for the 2008 model year, Subaru might have copied homework that Saab never turned in. Let me explain.

Back in the mid-aughts, GM had a stake in what was then known as Fuji Heavy Industries, and set about disguising a few Subaru models as its own cooking. First came the hastily rebadged Chevrolet Forester for the Indian market:

But most North Americans are more familiar with the Saab 9-2x:

Known affectionately as the Saabaru, it was a slightly tweaked Subaru Impreza sold through Saab showrooms, and it wasn’t the only Saab-Subaru tie-up planned.

See, in the mid-aughts, crossovers were also taking off, and GM was planning on tweaking the Subaru B9 Tribeca into a three-row Saab crossover called the 9-6x, pictured above and below. Oh, and on the outside, these tweaks were extensive. We’re talking about a new hood, new bumpers, new front fenders, new headlights, new grillework, a new hatch, and new taillights — big changes that ensured the 9-6x wouldn’t look much like the controversial B9 Tribeca.

However, in October 2005, the New York Times reported that General Motors sold 8.7 percent of its 20.1 percent stake in Fuji Heavy Industries to Toyota. GM would later go on to sell its entire stock, cutting ties with Subaru and ensuring the 9-6x would never see a Saab showroom. A prototype would survive, eventually being inducted into the Saab museum, but that was the end of the line for the 9-6x. Or was it?

Looking at the facelifted 2008 Subaru Tribeca, it bears more than a passing resemblance to the abandoned 9-6x. The taillights are identical, the liftgate stamping is quite similar, even the headlights look similar to the ones on the Saab, just with the black inserts painted silver. While certainly not identical to the 9-6x, the 2008 Tribeca shares more than a passing resemblance.

Was much of the 2008 Tribeca’s alterations different to those of the 9-6x? Sure. The hood, front bumper, and all the front bumper trim pieces are obviously different, and even the liftgate was slightly different due to an oval recess for a badge versus a round one. However, it’s not impossible to imagine that Subaru managed to cook up an emergency facelift for the B9 Tribeca so quickly because half of the homework was already done. What do you think?

(Photo credits: Subaru, Saab Museum)

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