If you're buying a Subaru, you're buying it because you value safety and reliability of the car, because your life/livelihood depend on it. You're not concerned about the infotainment system.
If they sold reliable PHEVs or even BEVs with 220mm+ ground clearance and some branding around torque and traction control, and they had any kind of advantage over Toyota in that niche, they'd probably do alright in the "I don't want a Land Cruiser BUT" market.
(Yeah, yeah, EJ head gaskets, just don't buy anything with an EJ series engine.)
If I want that, why wouldn’t I buy Toyota/Honda?
This curious bit is that it was 'You want something between a Toyota/Honda and a Lexus/Acura, but closer to the capability of a Jeep'. Where it's more curious, is that the modern Subaru hybrids are actually better at off-roading than the new Jeep Cherokee hybrid.
Why is that? Well at least IMO it's cause Subaru sticks to their guns, their hybrid system sticks to what they have always tried to do versus the Jeep doing, at least AFAIK, the same sort of 'AWD' hybrid setup of most hybrids, where the rear wheels are electric only and you have to wait for the computer to decide to apply Any power.
Interestingly, The closest hybrid AWD design I'm aware of to what Subaru is doing, is Ford with the AWD HF55 on the Maverick, in that case they are doing it to also help make sure it can meet the needs for 4K towing.
It's not as efficient, but it is at last consistent from a branding execution strategy. Definitely moreso than Jeep who has watered down everything they sell so much it's... who knows anymore.
The last 'forward-ish' thinking thing that I can think of, was the partnerships with Mitsubishi (i.e. Eagle/DSM) and the GEMA engine. But even those didn't really play out as huge wins long term, versus, say, Ford doing the quiet-ish license agreement patent swap around hybrid tech.
Penta-Star as they used to be called in the 90s, well, back then they had the Neon which was surprisingly competitive [0] in the small car segment despite being a relative death trap and having reliability issues[1][2]. They had the Grand Cherokee which was honestly innovative as far as being a Rear-wheel drive Unibody thing that could still compete with a Body-on-frame platform as far as handling/offroading.
The Daimler merger doomed them however, between the various accounting tactics used and overall clash of engineering management styles between the brands. Ironically I will note that of all the things Daimler messed up over there, they did manage to not mess up Jeep that much
But Daimler gutted the other brands, and FCA was fairly not-useful around fixing that... They had the 200, but like everything else let it sit too long without updates... to the point where 7-8-ish years ago, my father wanted to buy another Sebring to replace his increasingly problematic Sebring, and I managed to find a Chevy Malibu of all things to try instead. My dad had purchased Chrysler products since before I was even born.
He has thanked me for suggesting the Malibu multiple times since, he still talks about the things he likes about it sometimes even though it's getting a little long in the tooth, lately it has been more of a "I know I probably should replace it but I don't see anything I want" [3]
(which is the best hope I can have as his son having to do a 'bruh' moment to his father, around a purchase consideration.)
> Stelantis turned Jeep into a lifestyle brand
IMO They only accelerated the process and it wasn't just Jeep. FCA had a mixed bag around 'lifestyle branding' management as well.
After the FCA bit, 'Dodge' started becoming more of a 'performance' brand with the Hellcats/Demon/etc and for a short time had the Base Charger/Challenger and every Avenger as a 'pretender' model and the Dart as a quasi-compliance-car [4].
RAM came about under FCA as the 'commercial/truck' brand, Ignoring the thing where every other domestic maker kept their mainline Trucks [5] under their normal car brand.
[0] - OG Neons had a horsepower extremely competitive with the JDM cars of the Era
[1] - But oh wait they forgot to drill all the head gasket holes to consistent depth leading to head gasket failures
[2] - That transmission was originally designed for cars making way less HP/Torque and from experience it's not fun to deal with the clutch packs failing when trying to get onto a highway.
[3] - I mean, Worst comes to worst I will try to suggest a Crosstrek Hybrid (new) or Fusion Hybrid (used) if it comes up via incidental.
[4] - For the unaware, a compliance car, is a car made by the manufacturer to help improve their overall fleet emissions/mpg targets.
[5] - Sure, GM has GMC, but that was more branding towards a specific age demographic than 'commercial vehicle' or 'truck bro'.