2020 Subaru Impreza: Why sedans still beat SUVs for families
It’s time to stop obsessing about that SUV. Can you do it?
Too big? Kia Carnival & Mazda CX-9.
You want extra ride height, need a big boot, greater vision out on the road and you want it in a stylish package that feels fun and sporty to drive.
These are the most common reasons people give for wanting an SUV but sadly, the facts will tell you those advantages can be had in a much more affordable and notionally smaller sedan. Yep, a normal car.
Before we get into the Subaru Impreza itself, you need to remember one other important factor: a bigger car costs you more.
A wider, taller, longer SUV means more sheetmetal, plastic, more glass, bigger, wider wheels with bigger tyres, bigger brakes, and all this extra mass will cost you upfront, to maintain, insure and to move, ultimately.
The more weight, the more fuel you’ll burn to move it – there’s no opinion on this, only fact. Because physics. Look it up. #newtonslaw
Anyway, the Impreza sedan, for example, has a 460L boot space. This is the most critical part of buying a new car for your impending family arrival or of you’re already elbow deep in nappies, tantrums and homework.
C-HR: Too bloody small
The SUV version of the Impreza, the XV, can barely do 310L, and rival small SUVs like Mazda CX-3, Toyota C-HR, the Nissan Squashcourt, Mitsubishi ASX and the Hyundai Kona are all impractical.
In fact I’ve tried renting a C-HR with two large bags, a pram and baby seat to carry and it was utterly useless. In fact all small SUVs are. XV is cramped, Kona drives brilliantly, but is dynamically just a full cream i30.
But the biggest problem here is that the bigger SUVs in the midsize class, your Subaru Foresters, Toyota RAV4s, Hyubdai Tuscons and Kia Sportages, Mazda CX-5 and company, are admittedly the most popular these days, but that doesn’t mean they’re best for you.
And as for the ride height argument. Two things. You are highly unlikely to actually need ground clearance if you live in even a provincial town, let alone a metro suburb. Show me the sharp crests so high they’ll smash your suspension or sump. What ditches are you driving through or carpark speed-humps threatening your freedom.
And secondly, just raise your seat if you can’t see over the windscreen. There’s a misguided perception that you and the vehicle actually need to be 10-20mm higher than a sedan. You don’t. Just keep 2 seconds to the car in front, as you should be legally, looking as far up the road as possible, and you won’t have a vision issue.
Think about what you’re actually going to carry 90 per cent of the time. Think.
Kid + child seat
You and spouse
Nappy/kid’s bag, mum’s bag, maybe a couple of jackets
The pram
Food bag, bottle of wine, toy bag, etc
That’s it. All of this stuff, even the two bags of shopping you’re likely to stop for on the way home from whatever the occasion – all of it will fit in a sedan.
Which is why, if you’re raising kids on any form of economic conservation, don’t tip money into an SUV without actually thinking about something like an Impreza, Mazda 3 or Kia Cerato because it will still go to the vast majority of the same roads and places you intend on taking that SUV. In fact, it might even go further.
Your big SUV is going to spend most of its life barely laden and with stowage to spare, plus towing capacity you’re unlikely to ever actually utilise.
CARGO COMPARISON
So, Impreza boot space: 460L; Mazda3 sedan: 444L; new Hyundai Elantra 458L (when it eventually arrives), Kia Cerato 502L; Toyota Corolla sedan 470L, VW Passat 598L (too big, too dear, not in your budget, Golf isn’t available as a sedan: hatch only 380L). Besides, plenty of your stuff is going on the back seat or in the rear footwell anyway. And I’d give up 10L in the Corolla for the benefits of AWD any day.
But here’s what you should do. Car brands and dealers are desperate to sell cars right now, so ask the dealer for a weekend test drive of the car. Friday arvo to Monday arvo, so you can put the kids and stuff in it, and take it to work, so you can get a better feel for it than the 20 minute test drive route around the dealer’s immediate block.
If they give you the usual spin, tell them you’re happy to go look at a used one, or perhaps a different model at a rival dealer. That might help.
Something you might also enjoy in the sedan is legroom. Horizontal legroom, not the upright kind SUVs tend to preference. Tall people know what I mean. Something to consider. Impreza has good legroom, but not if you’re an NBA All-Star.
I’ve driven multiple SUVs in the last 12 months, particularly in the midsize group, and while they’re lovely to drive sedately - and I have two in the driveway at home which are great to own with practicality in spades – there is an excess of car not being used. Steel, rubber, plastic, glass…
Yes, I paid extra for that, but I did so knowing that it would be constantly laden with a high chair, pram, lots of bags, child seat, with more kids to come, and with a proclivity to go camping and tie stuff to the roof racks etc. But I’m an exception.
So don’t buy for the hope you’ll someday have five humans aboard plus their stuff, the dog, and a metric shitload of camping stuff. Because you just don’t need it, and some of you probably can’t afford it. All in all, it’s money saved in your pocket.
IMPREZZIVE (enough) PERFORMANCE
For the sake of transparency here, I’m a bit fond of Subarus; I like the boxer engine, I’ve driven every model in the range over the last few years and I even bought a 2018 Outback which I love.
But before you think I’m pushing Subaru’s barrow, know this: I think they need to get the Ascent seven-seater into Australia; I don’t particularly like the XV all that much (but I don’t hate it); the Outback’s electric tailgate is enragingly slow and its rear doors don’t open wide enough; the Forester’s powered tailgate slams shut; and the BRZ doesn’t look distinct enough against the Toyota 86. I also think Impreza has become a bit boring.
But, if you like driving, without being obsessed with performance, which is typical of many dads who have left their boy-racer wannabe days behind them, then Subaru’s sedans are lovely devices to punt.
Subaru Australia loaned the Impreza 2.0i-S for a week, and we drove it on the freeway, up the mountain roads to Marysville return, and for general duties around Melbourne’s east.
The outputs of Subaru’s Boxer four-cylinder of 115kW@6000rpm and 196Nm@4000rpm won’t set your pants on fire. But it is decent enough to move its 1400kg of mass with relative ease.
But, the problem most motoring journalists can’t seem to resolve is that the Impreza is not about power and brute force – wrong wheelhouse. What Impreza does brilliantly, is be a car.
People have become fascinated at the idea of an SUV driving like a normal car. Well here is a normal car, but with the added bonus of arguably the best all wheel drive systems on the market, and you dont need to pay the hefty top-spec price tag of some gargantuan SUV to get it.
Then there’s the CVT transmission. Again, plenty if revhead racing driver wannabe journalists will say it’s not as good as a conventional cyclical automatic, which is only true if you’re overly fixated on high performance and the delusion of how cars used to be, in terms of how they sound, what the dials do and how you drive accordingly.
See, once upon a time, there were two types of gearbox. One you manipulated yourself, and this totally uncool “automatic” type which did everything for you while sounding similar, in the way it revs, to a manual. But times have changed, technology has moved on and those dinosaurs stuck in the nostalgia nirvana matrix shouldn’t be influencing others on driving a CVT.
Subaru has being developing its CVT for a long time and has put a hreat deal of money into getting it right. Likewise its EyeSight collision avoidance – we’ll get to that next.
Simply, don’t listen to the uninformed voices pissing on Subaru’s CVT. It’s very good. Unlike some others.
You do need to adjust your driving style slightly, by avoiding the temptation to creep forward at very low speeds, such as sitting at traffic lights. Try to just be stopped and wait before setting off again. Unlike those moron tradies in their utes who, like dogs with worms grinding the grass, rock their cars forwards while waiting at a red light, torturing their clutch.
Anywho, you probably will think that the Impreza CVT is droning or constantly revving when you want it to settle down. Nothing’s wrong with it, it’s simply the computer trying to figure out what you want the car to do.
“Are we accelerating, and thus I need to prepare third gear?” That’s what the car’s asking you. So just keep driving normally, not making constant indecisions, and the car will sort itself out.
CVT stands for Continuously Variable Transmission, so it’s constantly adapting the engine’s revs based on your throttle inputs. Simple. You’re telling the car what’s going on. It gives you optimum revs without screaming and yelling about it (like a typical auto has to). Hence I say to just drive normally, and not like an idiot, and you’ll learn to love it.
In fact, the week with Impreza it was a wonderful reconnect with how it feels to drive a regular sedan. A day trip to Marysville through the Black Spur, under the atmospheric canopy of century-young ghost gums, twisting and winding through the valleys, smelling the moss, it was a delight.
It’s easy to just blip the ‘S’ drive mode which remaps the CVT and engine inputs for slightly more aggressive changes and to hold in the powerband longer. It’s a bit of fun, but you never lose yourself to the delusion of a white knuckle rollercoaster. Anybody who does is, again, in the wrong cinema.
The CVT does a good job and the AWD system feels goat-like on the glossy curves which, with long shadows across them, have sketchy written all over. But that’s the beauty, you don’t have to drive with a full of anxiety – you never get complacent – but it’s a pleasant drive. I just can’t accept people shunning Subaru’s CVT; it’s perfectly suited and performs.
For example, my previous car to the Outback-with-CVT was a 2008 Ford FG Falcon XR6 Turbo – with six-speed manual. Yup, a proper hot sedan with a clutch pedal and sledgehammer power from one of the most iconic engines ever made in Australia. God I miss that car, even today.
But I managed to slip into the Outback quite seamlessly. If I can, you can too.
SAFETY NET
EyeSight has been Subaru’s understated headline act for about a decade now. See, for a long time before that, back when Howard was PM and sending an SMS was considered social media, Subaru had a different reputation.
That image was painted by young people, such as my cousin, who found testing the limits of Subaru’s rally-honed all-wheel drive system and punchy Boxer engines, by seeing how elegantly they could wrap their WRXs around immobile objects. Trees, power poles, et al.
So the company responded. They turned that frown upside down by putting safety first, not wanker rally driver wannabes. And it worked.
It took the car industry by something not unlike a storm. It slso took a couple of iterations, but this current version is pretty good. But not perfect (dont worry, none of them are).
The lane departure warning and lane keeping assistance features remain in the ‘keep trying’ box. As a driver who is pathological about paying attention to driving, these systems are redundant and annoying.
But for teaching young people these fighter pilot driving tactics like optimum vision, mental planning and constant focus, lane keeping and departure warning are very useful.
The first time I experienced autonomous emergency braking and its associated technology was somewhat unique to most car buyers who never really get to truly understand how it works, or even confirm for themselves whether it does actually do what it says.
In 2016 was fortunate enough to be shown at a technically intimate level how the Impreza’s forward camera systems scan, identify and respond to objects and potential threats in a live driving environment – Port Melbourne, to be precise.
The camera never stops detecting, detecting, scanning, scanning and picks up almost everything. Kerbs, trees, cars, trucks, lane markings, road signs, people, bicycles – and it watches their speed, trajectory and readies the vehicle to respond. I sat there with Subaru Australia’s head of engineering and communications director, with a laptop on my knee as a visual representation of what the cameras were seeing.
And it did it quicker than I could hope to look and identify those same objects. Which is why these systems are so important today.
Auto emergency braking and radar cruise (aka adaptive cruise) are not designed to replace your responsibility to manahe the driving environment. They simply act as a second set of eyes, to catch what you might miss.
And it works. I’ve experienced AEB kicking in on several occasions, and as unnerving as it is experiencing the car taking control momentarily, it is absolutely reassuring. Worth every cent, too, because you don’t get practice runs in the real world.
Long term, if you actually have the intellect (which I remain hopeful the majority of people do), you have to learn to not to trust it implicitly.
These are, afterall, systems. They have sensors gathering information, compiters processing that data, and mechanical responses to handle those situations. But they aren’t impervious to false readings, missing things your eyes don’t and you can still trick these systems by unintentionally sending signals to the computer that don’t ring true.
What I’m saying is the car is entirely in your control. Don’t dial-back your attention and skills expecting the car to step in. That poor strategy will fail.
GET A GRIP
Plenty of car brands have image problems. But Subaru chose to face facts and change things for the better.
Their customer service is pretty good at a dealership level, as far as my local is concerned, as well as a rural NSW Subaru dealer and one in outer Melbourne. But you should judge for yourself with yours.
The Impreza itself is a modest smallish sedan with good qualifications, especially if you live in areas with gravel or dirt driveways which can because sktchy-as at the first sign of rain.
I’m not excellent with BrisVegas topography, but I know it rains all the bloody time. Sydney is a city built on an epic geological wet blanket, so symmetrical all wheel drive definitely has its uses here, especially again in outer sububrbs. And as for Melbournians, if you’re situated anywhere in the east, from say Pakenham to Lilydale to Eltham you’re perfect candidates to take advantace of this clever little car’s unique attributes.
If you’re shopping for a first-car for your learner teen or P-plated 20-something, avoid the rear-wheel drive shitbox barges wearing Commodore and Falcon badges. Out them in something with clever traction control and ESP, collision avoidance features that could spare them and yourselves a lifetime of trauma, and which still offers something sporty and snazzy to be seen in. Because, despite your rolling eyes, that’s what the little darlings want.
Impreza 2.0i-S loaned courtesy of Subaru Australia.
I always advocate for safety first, because the consequences of not having that priority are grim.
For a billion dollar multinational car company to stand out in the rain on its reputation and declare it needs to change – and goddamn doing it – wins my respect on ethics, honesty and transparency.
Subaru has done some really good things with its cars and, most importantly, for its customers in the last 5-10 years and it shows in their products.
I want you to put the Subaru Impreza high on your shopping list because, even though they’re a business vying for your cash (aren’t they all?), what you’re getting is a reliable, practical, sensible and interesting car that seems to put you first.
What do you want to know about the Subaru Impreza or any of its rivals? Let me help you find the right family sedan: send me an email.