Conventional wisdom says this is not the season for sport-utility vehicles. Gasoline prices are rising. Truck sales are tanking. The anti-SUV choir is reveling in refrain: “Told you so, told you so, SUVs are going to go.”

It seems prophetic – like pride coming before the fall, the high and the mighty brought down low, the wages of sin finally paid.

The SUV appears moribund. Those who were praying for its demise are preparing its requiem absent mourning. They would be wiser to postpone the funeral until they have the body. Perhaps, they should even review concepts of rebirth, resurrection, and redemption.

Why?

Subaru of America Incorporated has engineered a miracle. It is the 2006 Subaru B9 Tribeca, a spectacular new mid-size sport-utility vehicle that can pump new life into the SUV market. The possible turnabout can convert Subaru, a onetime apostate about things SUV, into the segment’s ultimate savior.

Maybe this should not be all that surprising. For example, it can be argued that Subaru extended and enhanced the life of the SUV in 1998 when it introduced the Subaru Forester, essentially a tall all-wheel-drive station wagon endowed with SUV utility and passenger car manners.

The Forester was the first of a modern wave of “crossover vehicles” – tough, practical wagons that imitated SUV styling without adopting the breed’s faults, such as egregious fuel and parking space consumption and the often difficult ingress and egress for SUV drivers and passengers.

The Forester recognized that many of the people who bought SUVs did not really want those vehicles – at least, they did not want many of the things that came with them. Instead, they wanted something more manageable – milder, smaller, more fuel-efficient versions of the 1946 Willys Wagon and its 1963 successor, the Jeep Wagoneer, both of which are regarded by automotive historians as the original crossover wagon/car/truck vehicles.

The Forester, largely based on the Subaru Impreza car platform, was followed by the Outback, a larger crossover vehicle that owes much of its being to the Subaru Legacy car and wagon. The Outback turned out to be as much of a success for Subaru as did the Forester.

Now, Subaru has borrowed components from the Legacy/Outback – notably the Outback’s trusty three-liter, 250-horsepower, horizontally opposed six-cylinder engine – to develop the B9 Tribeca. Here’s betting that, even at a price north of $30,000, which makes it probably the most expensive Subaru ever sold in the America, the B9 Tribeca is going to be a hit.

We’re talking about something approaching product and marketing genius here. The Tribeca is aimed at the automotive industry’s prestige, midsize wagon/SUVs – models such as the Acura MDX, BMW X5, Cadillac SRX, Infiniti FX35, Land Rover LR3, Lexus RX330, and the Mercedes-Benz ML350. The B9 Tribeca matches, or beats, all of those rivals in craftsmanship, amenities, and utility; and it generally does it all at a lower price.

The kicker is that the all-wheel-drive B9 Tribeca also beats all but one of those models in highway fuel economy at 24 miles a gallon. The four-wheel drive Lexus RX330 matches the Tribeca’s fuel economy, but at an uneconomical price tag that’s about $3,500 higher.

Still, not everyone will like the B9 Tribeca. Subaru has reverted to its tradition of quirky exterior styling on this one. The front end – with its bold nose abutted by winged grilles – looks aggressive and purposeful. But the center and rear portions take flight with winglike creases emanating from the center body pillars and growing more prominent as they reach and wrap around the tail.

It is a theme repeated in the cabin, highlighted by an instrument panel that looks like an ultra-modern, techno logical flying buttress. The whole design package is at once disconcerting and delightful. I found myself hating it and then loving it, hating it and finally falling madly in love with it because it is all so wonderfully, defiantly different – and very functional, to boot.

Ah, but isn’t that fitting? Nothing ever changed through a passionate embrace of mediocrity. No one ever sparked a revolution or a comeback by accepting conventional wisdom as something wise, true, immutable, inevitable. Redemption, rising above the apparent permanence of failure, requires belief and action. Here’s to Subaru – and to the B9 Tribeca – for keeping the faith.