The Forester may have a better height to the cabin, bit that model now sits up higher than some 4x4s. The other item about loading Drogon was that the height wasn’t quite as much as I’d hoped. What made this more surprising is that to get into her Edge you have to lift yourself slightly to get into the driver’s seat. So back to the top and the original brief, how is this for the dog? It turns out the load height of the Outback is within an inch and a quarter to an inch and a half of my wife’s Ford Edge! Didn’t really see that one coming. But man, it needs to be dialed back about twenty percent so it isn’t just tuned out. I get that Subaru is very proud of their safety record and touts it in their advertisement. It was to the point I wanted to turn the whole system off, which would be a bad idea. Other times it would go off for reasons I could not fathom. On several occasions, including with my wife driving, it would beep at you going through an intersection that had a green light. Starlink is VERY aggressive in its warning. Now if I was to spend more time with the Outback perhaps I could make some adjustments, but that takes time to find out if you can make adjustments and then see how it plays out. I wouldn’t solely rely on the backup camera at night, you are best to do a shoulder check as well.įinally, we need to talk about Starlink. Sure you can see behind you, but it is very grainy. If I had to put it in perspective, think iPhone 4 or 5 shooting at night. The low light resolution on it was not great. Not present on this Outback.Īnother item that stood out to us is the backup camera. Qi chargers in new cars are almost ubiquitous at the $30,000 price point and above. More so given the large infotainment screen which we will get to in a moment. While maybe not a negative, it is certainly a miss and that is no Qi charging on the Outback. Be it the middle of winter where I want to start it up to warm the cabin or the middle of summer to cool it, it’s far easier with a button on the fob. Go ahead, call me a Boomer but can I please just have a remote start on the fob without having to go through my phone. Do you know where the remote start is not? On the key fob. One thing that is on the Subaru app is remote start. However, when you are in and out of different cars every week, it is a pain in the ass. For people who buy or lease their vehicles, it’s not that much of a thing. Driving in the Detroit area at the end of January, it’s cold around here, and a heated steering wheel is nice to have.Ī bigger item for me is the movement of features into an app. You CAN get a heated steering wheel in the Limited model, but you are at $40,000 for that, this Onyx trim level is almost $38,000 and we could list out a number of vehicles sub $30,000 that come with a heated wheel as standard. Given the type of people who buy Subaru’s and where they live, no heated steering wheel in this XT Onyx edition seems like a big miss. Let’s get the negatives out of the way with this Outback. The nice thing about the turbo engine is that it will keep it at its rated power up past a mile of elevation. A four-cylinder engine making peak power near the redline at sea level, let alone at altitude where you lose 30% of your power, is a recipe full of not good. The combination of a 182 horsepower NA motor with a CVT transmission just seems like a bad idea.ĬVT’s tend to only work well when they have some torque in front of them. Places like Vermont, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Arizona and other places with significant elevation. Especially if you consider the places so many Subaru customers live. Having driven the turbo motor, I’m not sure why anyone would order the NA version. While I have not had any time recently behind the naturally aspirated unit, I did have about half an hour of driving this turbo motor last fall at the MAMA Fall Rally and thought it was good. I specifically asked for an XT trim so that I could get the 2.4-liter turbo motor. Since my wife has expressed interest in the Outback I requested one in for review. The hope was that the Outback being more of a wagon, he could get in by himself. Drogon weighs 130+ pounds and he’s a bit much for my wife to lift in. You see, while he pops up to put his front paws in the hatch area, he has to have his rear end lifted to get the rest of the way in. The brief for this review, would the Outback make a good replacement for my wife’s Ford Edge for hauling our Irish Wolfhound.
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