Subaru Outback review: The SUV wagon for adventurous Aussie families
If you’re shopping for an SUV with the specific intention of taking it to some adventurous destinations, then you should be exploring the Subaru range.
The new Outback improves significantly over the old model, and I can personally vouch for that.
But there are some let-downs with this new Outback, a couple of which I was genuinely looking forward to seeing.
This car enters a hard-fought market where many competitors - which you should also have on your shortlist - are a better value option for your budget.
For full disclosure, Subaru Australia loaned BestFamilyCars (me) two Outbacks, the top-spec Touring (the red one) and the base model (called ‘Outback’), for a week each.
And I personally own the superseded Outback 2.5i Premium. So what I say about this car will come from more than just a fleeting few weeks of low-kay test driving.
Subaru should’ve called the entry level Outback ‘Basecamp', because that makes sense. It’s also the best value in the Outback range, if you can live without a sunroof.
What you’ll like
The redesigned roof racks are less boxy, but still easy to deploy in about 30 seconds. Standing on either the rear driver’s side tyre, you simply lift the flaps to unlock the pins, swing the bar carefully to avoid scratching your roof, and rest it on the other side. Repeat on the opposite side by stepping on the inner door sill, while also remembering to lock in the first bar, and return to the driver’s side to lock in bar #2. You’re now ready to go and strap down whatever luggage pod, tent or surfboard etc you’re taking.
The 2.5 direct injection boxer engine is much smoother and offers seven per cent more power (138kW) is good for overtaking trucks in a hurry. So, when you apply more throttle, more happens than in the old car it replaces.
Subaru’s very good CVT is much more responsive when you’re planning to overtake that truck. You can build up speed quicker, and apply more throttle to increase the revs and wait for your gap in traffic, without having to thump the pedal like in the old car.
The build quality still feels very solid, well-built and comfortable, especially in the seats which remain quite supportive on long trips with plenty of bolstering. And we drove 3.5 hours, non-stop, from Melbourne to Warrnambool the week before Easter (to avoid crowds), and the Outback was sublime, not only to sit in, but to drive.
I hate to use the cliché, but it kinda does fit like a glove in a way. See, Outback isn’t quite as big overall as some other large SUVs - it’s close - but remains a fraction slimmer and shorter than, say a Hyundai Santa Fe or Kia Sorento, or something like Palisade, LandCruiser or Pajero Sport sized - all of which are quite high. Outback can still sit you up high enough, as SUV buyers want (although, don’t actually really need). But it’s not stupidly high, and does actually feel like a normal car in terms of how it rolls through corners, brakes, and manoeuvres.
And carmakers are always banging on about trying to make their SUVs ‘car-like' to drive. Outback does that without trying, because it already is a car; the Liberty.
Steering is nice and light without lacking feel, and while the highway terrain Bridgestones are a little noisy on hard, coarse backroads, they’re fairly quiet on low-speed suburban roads. And the suspension is tuned just right to feel soft enough for family use but still responsive enough to hold the road through twisty turns.
Satnav map on the new big screen makes navigating new towns and roads easier, however the operation buttons, like zoom-in/out, are on the left, not the right (driver's side) and they're too small to hit accurately while driving. And for some reason, when you do zoom in, say to get a more localized view of your position, when you look back at the road and return to the map, sometimes it decides to zoom back out again, of its own accord.
The front passenger dashboard tray is really handy, in particular for stowing items short term, such as when you’re working in the car, as I did.
And while I like the long-drop storage hole fore of the transmission lever, because it's ideal for a phone (singular), especially for keeping it kinda out of the way in terms of distractions, you can't get two phones in there now, unlike in the old car. The upshot is that the stupid, clunky and easily broken or jammed flip-down lid on the previous car has been killed off. Thank Christ.
The sunglasses holder now actually fits a pair of sunglasses, which is a victory not just for Subaru, but for all of Australia.
Speaking of vision, the windshield washers are now better than ‘poor’ as in the old car; they actually spray across the windscreen rather than doing a lazy piddle, like in the old model (my car).
A bigger centre console is much more usable than the old one, and the dual layer lid is a useful addition when you just need to secretly stash something briefly, like while you go for a walk or grab something from the shops.
Overall, Outback has matured nicely over the old model.
I love the very subtle bonnet ‘bulge’, if you wanna call it that. Reminds me of my old turbo Falcon.
The tailgate closes so much faster in this new Outback. My car literally gives me enough time to get back in the car and have my belt on before it's finished.
The catch? It now kinda thumps closed, like in the Forester, which might wake your little one if they're an exceptionally light sleeper.
Also new to the boot design us the use of two large hydraulic struts, rather than the three-piece arrangement on the previous Outback. This means the bigger stronger struts are less likely to fail, and the boot’s aperture itself is a more user-friendly thing for getting large objects in and out.
When you come to moving house or helping shift things for your in-laws, or whatever, you’ll appreciate knowing I’ve managed to fit a moderate size (but still bloody big, and heavy) treadmill in the boot of my Outback. You should have no problems doing the same in the new model. But you’ll want to have lots of old towels or sheets for protecting the leather and plastic trims which can tear or gouge easily, as in any car.
If you cop a flat tyre, a full size spare, stored internally under the boot floor, is excellent for regional and long distance touring. Storing it inside means it's not filthy when you go to use it, nor is it susceptible to damage.
But you will need to unpack heavy things before even attempting to get the jack out, unscrewing the spare and getting the wheel itself out. Oh, and make sure you don’t put everything back in until you’ve change the flat, so you can store the busted wheel (face down) in the cavity under the floor.
Outback quirks you might hate
Reflective glare off that signature portrait infotainment screen in afternoon sun is pretty bad. It's not the nature of the design itself that makes it difficult, just the circumstances of a big reflective surface and Australia’s exposure to disproportionate amounts of sunlight compared with every other market on earth.
And it’s not specifically a Subaru criticism, it’s a big screen criticism. Teslas have the same problem. The Hyundai Santa Fe and Palisade, and Kia Carnival and Sorento landscape screens do the same.
You can’t remove the cupholder’s centre partition any more, to make it easier to get fingers in there.
Those ultra deep cup holders, a legacy from the US market, are dumb and need some kind of rubber insert at the bottom so regular people who drink reasonable sized cups of coffee can actually extract their flat white inside a biodegradable cup with their fingers, without having to lift it using the lid. That's a medium coffee (left) in a cupholder so deep I almost pull the lid off trying to get it out. And then you spill it as you essentially drop it back in, post-sip. Coffee fingers.
Automotive retailer AutObarn will order you a tailor made pair of rear window ‘sox' for ~$50, but at $52K, they could be retractable.
Frustrating is the fact there’s still no retractable row-two window shades, which is doubly disappointing considering this is supposed to be a family touring wagon. Long trips, summer holidays, Australian UV (melanoma capital of the world) -- the car’s called ‘Outback’ for goodness sake… which leads me to my next gripe.
One of my biggest disappointments with the new Subaru Outback is there’s still no ventilated seats. In Australia. The hottest driest continent on the planet. Subaru has been selling cars here since the 1970s. Other vehicles in the same market segment have cooled seats and retractable sunshades.
And yet we have a steering wheel warmer. Australia has three places for snow, for just a few weeks of the year: Kosciuszko, Tasmania, Victorian High Country. A 50K Outback Touring needs cooled seats, and a chilled glove box, while we’re on the subject.
Auto ignition stop-start is now buried in the menus, which means it's almost too hard to locate and deactivate when you're pressed for time. It just depends how much you hate it, and how much you want to preserve the ignition battery from premature death.
In about one hour of cumulative stop time (and those hundreds of additional battery discharge cycles), it's saved about 1 litre of fuel. That's about $1.50. A replacement battery, which is a wear and tear item, therefore not covered under warranty and will cost you when it dies, about $150. Not worth it.
Although reducing the inhalation of carcinogenic emissions in your city is worth it.
My next gripe with new Outback is the lack of extendible sun visors for the drive and front passenger. Similar to the ventilated seats reasoning, Kia has put extendible sunvisors on their Sportage and Cerato for years. How hard is it? And this is a family touring SUV. The doors and windows aren’t small, and there’s a large chunk of glass that never gets covered in the same way your face gets belted with sunlight from 3-5pm.
As a family SUV wagon, the rear bumper sill needs a scuff plate (thrown on the top spec Touring) to avoid scratching the paint when removing big heavy cumbersome prams, bikes and camping stuff. There's an excess of black plastic cladding around the outside of the car, but I'd rather see some in a more practical place.
After all, if you're running your new Outback into sharp, scratchy things that require that external plastic to take the hit, you're doing driving wrong.
And the biggest change for this new generation Outback is, of course, that bloody big portrait screen. It might be slick in terms of removing 'clutter' for the dashboard and putting everything in one place, but it's lost that easy-to-use functionality I love about my Outback. If you're buried in a menu somewhere, the one push of the 'radio' button to return to your station (in my car) is now two button pushes: 'Home' and 'Radio'. Ditto 'Maps' or 'Media' or 'Settings'.
I don’t think climate settings, including temperature, fan speed, mode/position or demisting should be in a screen, ever. These are vital functions you need to drive the vehicle safely. If that big heroic screen fails, you must have access to those features in order to get to the dealership for repairs. But if you’re fogging up on a cold day en route to the service department, that’s dangerous.
Look, the screen won’t fail. That would be highly unlikely; the new Outback is far more likely to be extremely reliable because it’s a Subaru and they're partly owned by Toyota, so it’s a pretty low risk. I'm simply pointing this big-screen safety aspect out, and it may not concern you. It certainly wouldn’t worry me, but you’re potentially buying this car, not me.
Buying an Outback, or any other vehicle, is not perfectly risk free. If you want to buy a new Subaru Outback, you’re making an informed decision by considering all factors. And now that we've done the good vs bad, let’s look at Outback’s primary features.
Engine
Some people will tell you the Subaru 2.5 boxer engine is underpowered and generally a bit boring. But that’s probably from people who haven’t lived with it, or don’t know how to make it hustle. It will definitely hustle.
And to be honest, in a way, they’re only partially accurate. I’ll take boring every day of the week over ‘exciting (yet unreliable)’.
Mums and dads generally don’t need ‘exciting’, they need more sleep and less stress. Raising kids increases your blood pressure enough as it is. Families need reliability and dependability, which this engine does without trying.
Admittedly, there are more exciting engines, more powerful engines, and I do agree with critics that Subaru needs a warm or kinda-hot version of the Outback. They’ve kinda done that with the Forester Sport, but it’s not mechanically superior under the bonnet to a regular Forester S. There is an Outback ‘Sport’ variant in the middle of the three-tier range, but it loses the roof rails, which is stupid - we’ll get to that.
They dropped the old 3.6R ‘performance’ model Outback and it was (naively) expected we might get the 2.4 litre turbo petrol boxer engine in the new Outback, as is the case in the United States.
However, Subaru Australia has told me the factory in Indiana, which makes that 2.4 engine hasn’t made the investment for small right-hand drive markets like ours. Bugger.
The good thing about Outback’s 2.5 boxer is it is now direct injection, which means the fuel-air mixture sprays directly into the cylinder and gives it much better response when you put your foot down. And you get a little bit more power.
There's greater immediacy from the engine, which means you can make decisions with more assertion. Where you would’ve hesitated and waited when pulling out of an intersection in the previous Outback, you can now get on with it.
As for making it hustle, if you use the ‘S’ button on the steering wheel, you get a different engine and throttle mapping which keeps the revs higher and keeps you in peak power for longer before changing ratio. And the other aspect to giving the Outback a red-hot go is to keep your foot down while scanning the road; the main problem with people doing this in other cars is they add big-throttle without the obligatory safety check, watching for unexpected changes on the road ahead.
Having your wits about you and giving full attention means you can get the new Outback to mumbo, but you have to commit to it; you can’t just ‘give it a squirt’ and back off like a kid blindly testing if the stove is hot. Outback requires a different kind of motivation. If you’re on an empty, dry back road and you need to get around a slow car, or perhaps you need to pick up the pace, push ‘S’, switch on your eyes and re-format your brain (turn off the radio too), use the paddleshifts where necessary for some compression braking, and make sure you know how to use the brake pedal in an emergency braking scenario (get proper training).
Otherwise, don’t be an idiot, and drive Outback like a civilised human being - or stop being a troll and quit criticising a family SUV for not being a sports car. This includes motoring journalists who don’t insure the press cars they live in and drive their mates around in.
Transmission
Outback, like the rest of Subaru’s range, has a Continuously Variable Transmission, or ‘CVT’.
Essentially, it’s one ‘gear’ which actually has a belt and pulley system to deliver optimum power at the ideal revs, based on how you’re driving.
If you put in 10 per cent throttle from stationary, the car knows you need first and second gear to get going at a moderate pace. If you’re stationary and do 50 per cent throttle, clearly you need to bugger off quickly and it’ll give you peak power for longer. Likewise, if you’re at 95km/h using 1 per cent throttle, clearly you’re freeway driving; but if you add a dash of steering lock and go to 20 per cent throttle, you’re overtaking and the CVT will change ratio and rev harder to give you more power to pass that truck.
CVTs work similarly to ordinary automatic transmissions (called ‘epicyclic’ autos) except the CVT doesn’t need to wait for the engine to reach peak power, only to reach the ‘powerband’ and then change gear to start all over again. CVTs are much better at staying in the powerband - the trick is to keep your foot down and learn to live with the ‘noisy’ nature of the revving engine. Some people when they first drive an Outback might think the engine’s always revving and they don’t like that - but this is only because you’ve been conditioned to hearing an epicyclic auto which revs for a brief moment (powerband/peak power) before going quiet again. If you can get over this audible perception thing, you’ll enjoy the benefits of the very clever CVT.
It’s a very efficient transmission which saves you fuel and provides adequate response to driving. If you’re a normal driver and don’t care about setting lap times on your way to work or to the caravan park, Subaru’s CVT is perfectly fine for the vast majority of driving you’re likely to do. Before buying my Outback I had a turbocharged XR6 Falcon, which was fast, it was burgundy, had fat tyres and a rear spoiler - you might’ve described me as a car enthusiast. The Outback is a great car to drive, and even drive enthusiastically. The only ‘trick’ is accepting that it’s a bit different, fundamentally.
Regarding the Outback’s CVT specifically, it has been improved in terms of its responsiveness to the driver’s inputs, and it’s much more keen to change ratio than my Outback - you might say it’s more intuitive.
And how the Outback drives is one of the key reasons I bought mine in mid-2018. But I don’t tolerate uninformed opinions that rubbish Subaru’s CVT, because it’s largely wrong and a sign of people not knowing how to drive. No internal combustion vehicle has a transmission that instantly responds when you touch the throttle, not in mainstream cars anyway. So don’t expect the Outback’s CVT to drive like a Porsche, because it needs a moment to interpret the signals you’re sending it and respond.
Actually, if you learn how to drive a good CVT, like this one, they can actually be quite zippy and I certainly had a crack at hustling the Outback the way I’ve learned to make mine get-up-and-go. The new car is much more responsive in every way and is an all-round improvement on my old car in (almost) every way. It’s even marginally lighter.
This whole car feels more pepped up and athletic.
Proper All-Wheel Drive
Let’s get this straight. All wheel drive does not give you more grip.
No, that's right, you don’t get better traction or any of that rubbish you'll read in other reviews.
All-wheel drive simply splits what’s known as ‘tractive effort’, or what you could loosely call ‘drive’ or maybe ‘power'. Just don’t call it that to an engineer.
All-wheel drive divides the power (to the wheels) between four wheels, all the time. Rather than two wheels (front or rear) doing the driving, in most other vehicles, Outback (and all other AWD Subarus) sends 25 per cent of the drive to each wheel. Why? Because if it was 50 per cent, you would be twice as likely to break traction and create wheelspin. AWD simply reduces the likelihood of wheelspin. When you’re going through a bog, you don’t want wheelspin; that’s bad. If you swerve to avoid a kangaroo on a wet, gravel road at 60-70km/h, AWD will help you recover much easier, without as much intervention from the traction control or ESC systems (some of which don’t react as well on dirt roads like they do on sealed roads).
You want the wheels to keep turning, because that means they’re pushing you along, and they’re not locking up or skidding - which means you can steer. AWD means you’re a 1/4 chance of creating wheelspin, not 1/2 (50/50).
Overall, it’s just a more stable platform to drive in really poor conditions; you’re far less likely to have to unexpected things happen. There are also advantages like accelerating from traffic lights on steep hills during heavy rain, or getting out of festival carparks, or driving over oil spills in the middle of an intersection corner post-crash.
When you’re far from the security of sealed roads, Subaru has a smart computer software program called X-Mode, which was once a simple button on the centre console below the transmission shifter, but is now in the touchscreen menu. I prefer the button, which takes far less brainpower to turn on/off.
X-Mode uses inputs from your driving and tells the traction control system to respond to the terrain by braking individual wheels on steep inclines or declines, where it will try to keep the wheels from skidding/locking. In sandy or muddy conditions, where the wheels are gonna have varying, low levels of grip at each corner and need to keep turning, it will direct power to the wheels that aren’t slipping (because they have traction).
Just a word of warning. X-Mode is a very clever system. I have used it several times over the years in varying situations, but you shouldn’t get the false impression that it allows you to treat your Outback as a pseudo-4WD. It’s a family SUV and is not designed to cop heavy-duty off- road conditions. I have a friend who took his Outback across a beach where the blue-singlet 4WDers said he wouldn’t make it - so it will do more than most other SUVs. Just don’t abuse it.
This touchscreen relocation of X-Mode means you can't really do a swift radio or song change whilst doing the light off-roading stuff when you're already busy with mental tasks, trying to manage the terrain. You'll have to use the skip buttons on the steering wheel if you require the X-Mode stuff front-and-centre because you're in snowy/muddy/sandy conditions with the kids on board.
It's not all bad. This does mean you're forced to prioritise driving and not stuffing around with tunes. Paying attention to the gnarly roads is obviously more important than putting on Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory on the CD player. Should have done that before the roads got dicey.
Having a mechanical AWD system underneath you at all times can be both redundant and rewarding, as road conditions change. Two-wheel-drive is all you need most of the time, but it depends what kind of driving you’re going to do.
If you find yourself in these situations, symmetrical AWD splits power and reduces chance of wheelspin.
If you’re in a strange area on holiday and stumble upon dodgy roads, at night, and it starts raining, it’s a very reliable and useful system for turning around on lost back roads, or for scuttling across soggy paddocks. It’s also exceptionally good when you go camping and wake up the next morning to a slightly sinister dew across the midly sloped camp grounds. The 2WDs and on-demand AWD SUVs will have trouble getting out, whereas you’ll want to have a tow strap ready to help them out.
The compromise is that you don’t always need AWD all the time. Dry, sealed roads are completely unnecessary for such a drivetrain, especially if all you ever do is traffic and highway commuting, with the odd winery driveway every couple of months.
You have to decide what kind of driving you’re likely to do and decide what’s right for you.
BUYING A REAL 4WD
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The Boot & Your Kids
I think there’s a necessary attitude to have with owning an Outback.
You can't expect it to stay perfectly clean and immaculate; this is a car that's supposed to get dirty.
As for picking the right Outback in the new condensed three-step range, I think for the hyper-practical buyer, the Touring top spec is expensive for the addition of features you’re not going to need.
The ‘Sport' mid-spec loses the roof rails which is just silly.
The fact you now get a 2000kg braked towing capacity, should suggest this is a vehicle which is prepared to pull trailers and camper trailers, the boot is a great size for not just filling with luggage, but toys, sports and there’s a full size spare under the floor.
What’s great about the height of the boot floor relative to the ground, is the ability to change kids into and out of wet, muddy, sandy and clean clothes.
The Outback’s boot remains a clever piece of design, which is probably why it’s basically exactly the same as the previous generation.
I managed to pack for several days, including luggage, eski, endless toys and a scooter, bedding and the rest of the house. And the joy of the Outback is you can pack so much in and keep most of it below the eyeline of the driver’s rearview mirror. I think Outback retains the Legacy’s fundamental wagon design of prioritising boot space and function, which is the vehicle’s secret weapon against the rest of the SUV crowd. You can see it in traffic, some big 7-seat SUV packed to the roof with stuff, with zero vision out the back.
About the only thing I can measurably see different in the new Outback’s boot is the operation of the retractable cargo blind which is now a downward-angled deployment rather than the straight-out flat design on my car. It was a little weird to use initially, for the first time, but it makes sense and doesn’t seem any more or less susceptible to having any quirks.
In general, the boot is nice and open, free of obstructions, and with well over a metre of useable stowage space between the modest wheelarches. The backseat folding mechanism is still a pull-handle on either side, depending which combination of the back row you want to drop. And the handle is still fairly robust to pull, while the shopping and tie-down loops remain flimsy, as they are in all SUVs; they’re all a bit gimmicky in my view.
Under the floor is the full-size spare wheel and sundry tools, with a bit of extra space for storing your own tools for longer trips, as I did on our mini adventure to Victoria’s west coast.
I didn’t get a chance to tow anything with the new Outback, but that’ll happen in due course.
The new Subaru Outback has some simple problems which are a bit disappointing and make me feel good about buying our version when we did. A big bold screen doesn’t get me excited in the same way it does for many people, so it’s entirely subjective whether you see it as a net gain.
What makes the Outback a strong family car option for me, and why I recommend it, is the fundamentals which Subaru gets right - good ergonomics, reliability and build quality, and renowned customer service in Australia.
I also value highly the inherent ability the Outback carries with it everywhere, without morphing into a hardcore off-roader which most families simply doesn’t need. We have absolutely no desire to scale the Great Dividing Range at 10km/h for days on end. But we do look forward to weekends away with a big tent and a roaring fire, possibly with a modest camper trailer in the next few years as the little guy gets bigger.
And I like the idea of not getting stuck if the weather turns.
I suggest getting the lighter base model Outback, because it’s the best value for money; the gear you need without the pricey toys. It also means you get the most payload when towing.
If the new Subaru Outback is the kind of family car that is going to suit your family weekends away, email me with any questions and I can even help you get a discount.