The new Subaru Outback is unaccountably large - 4.8 metres long, 1.8 metres wide, 1.6 metres high - but low-slung; it looks much more estate than SUV. This, paradoxically, makes it seem even larger. One makes allowances in an SUV and expects to feel ridiculous. In a supersized estate, I was never prepared for how much I would always be sticking out, everywhere.
Given its outlandish size, the Outback was strangely characterless. I drove to Bristol and parked in a hurry on some floor or other of a multistorey. When I returned, Icouldn’t remember anything about it, not even its colour, which occupied some indeterminate, Welsh-weather-ish space between brown and grey. Luckily, I had parked in a way that nobody else would, which is how I was able to find it without having to wait until all the other cars had gone home.
Going fast was a pleasure; the 2.0 turbo-diesel automatic features Subaru’s “lineartronic continuously variable transmission”, meaning you are always, with split-second efficiency and true 21st-century responsiveness, in the right gear. It tells in the smoothness and the silence. Acceleration at higher speeds is absolutely effortless and on motorways I was constantly leaning out of the window, screaming, “Sayonara!” and “Eat my shorts!” (in my head).
On the run-up to a motorway, however, it was insufferable. There’s a feature called “eyesight assist”, also described as “a second pair of eyes for drivers”. In fact, it is not a second pair of eyes: for one, it is not connected to your brain; for two, you can never tell what it’s responding to.
Some bits are obvious - “lane deviation”, it flashes - but I noticed that thanks to my first pair of eyes. Other times, it beeps with no obvious explanation; the manual is impenetrable and you end up Googling what the noise means while you’re in traffic. Great. Now Ihave no pairs of eyes. They’re seriously delighted with the tech - shouting about the fact that it’s the first time it’s been made available in Europe - and I can’t see the point of it at all. The only way it would help is if your sight or attention were so impaired you shouldn’t be driving in the first place.
The satnav was also maddening - not very fast, full of intricate changes you could make that never would have occurred to me (for instance, the verbosity level on the voiceover), but impossible to change where it counted. You couldn’t, for instance, turn the voice off. My mister found it unbearable. “Thanks for interrupting my favourite song to tell me to keep going straight ahead,” he would yell, as I wondered aloud how Losing My Religion could be his favourite song, and he said, “Obviously, when I’m talking to the satnav, I mean favourite song on Magic FM.”
The Outback was known for not being a town car, if only because no one who lives in a town would ever need this much boot space. Itsextrasafety features, while devised with traffic in mind, have turned it from somewhat unnecessary for the self-respecting urbanist into anactive pest.
Subaru Outback: in numbers
Top speed: 124mph
Acceleration: 0-62mph in 9.7 seconds
Combined fuel consumption: 50.4mpg
CO2 emissions: 159g/km
Cool rating: 6/10
Eco rating: 6/10
Guardian News & Media Ltd, 2015
