2022 Subaru Outback Premium on 2040-cars

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2020 Subaru Outback Touring Quick Spin | Balance of power

Driving an Outback in Subaru-crazy Seattle is just about as incognito as one can get. You can further disappear into the Evergreen State background if your Outback is Autumn Green Metallic. And that’s how we blended in for a week in a town where the Outback has been the top-selling vehicle several years, and where Subarus constitute 12% of all vehicles sold (2.5 times the brandÂ’s market share nationwide). A few cars are outselling the Outback so far this year — but that's OK, because one of them is the Subaru Forester. Our disguise for a week was a 2020 Outback Touring, the top trim level, which starts at $38,355 including destination fee. For that sum, which is nearly $12,000 more than a base Outback, you get a quite-nice interior done up in warm Java Brown Nappa Leather, with sunroof, 18-inch black aluminum alloy wheels, satin-chrome side mirrors, body-color door handles, heated steering wheel, and driver-distraction mitigation system. ItÂ’s a handsome package, especially the 11.6-inch Starlink touchscreen built into a monolithic, smooth black glass center stack, though the HVAC controls in particular are a curious mix of analog and digital. And it all rides on a new, stiffer platform — making the Outback inwardly new from the ground up, even though it was outwardly designed to look pretty much like it always has. ItÂ’s a conservative, donÂ’t-mess-with-success design approach that Subaru also used on the new Forester. What you donÂ’t get, at least not on this Outback tester nor the one we drove a few months ago in our first-drive review, is a whole lot of power. Both cars were equipped with SubaruÂ’s base 2.5-liter boxer four-cylinder engine that doesnÂ’t reach its peak 182 horsepower until 5,800 rpm, with peak torque of 176 pound-feet at 4,400 rpm. Curb weight on the Touring is 3,772 pounds. Horsepower is up by a mere seven over last year, torque by two pound-feet. Here in Subaru city, IÂ’ve known Outback owners who praise their car's virtues but almost apologetically slip in a qualifier: A little more power wouldÂ’ve been nice. Subaru has a solution for that — the optional XT engine, a 2.4-liter turbocharged engine putting out a thatÂ’s-more-like-it 260 horsepower and 277 lb-ft of torque. The turbo four takes the place of the 3.6-liter flat-six that was offered through 2019. But the MSRPs for the XT trims are a big step up – $4,300 to go from Limited to Limited XT, $2,350 from Touring to Touring XT – to a total ranging from $35,905 to $40,705.

2015 Subaru WRX: Accident, wheels and tires

I'm sure this thing is going to be a total hoot in the snow. I am not a morning person. At all. Thankfully, the Autoblog team knows this – I rarely get bothered before 8:30 AM unless it's seriously important. So when associate multimedia producer Chris McGraw started blowing up my phone at 6:45 AM on a Thursday, I knew it wasn't going to be good. "I got rear-ended in the WRX," McGraw informed me, a shaken-up tone emanating from the other end of the line. Poor guy was on his way to the gym, for his pre-office morning workout, and an older gentleman in a Chevrolet S-10 struck the back of the Subie while trudging through a traffic jam on I-696 just northeast of Detroit. Everyone was fine, and McGraw says that the dude's pickup was in significantly worse shape than our dear Subaru. But the WRX was still pretty banged up, and later that day, it was delivered to the body shop for what turned out to be a lengthy repair process. What you're looking at is $4,620.83 worth of damage. What you're looking at is $4,620.83 worth of damage, but thanks to Autoblog parent company AOL's fleet insurance policy, we were only on the hook for our $1,000 deductible. Nearly all of the rear body panels had to be replaced, as did the bumper and taillight assembly, and after several weeks of being put under the knife at Suburban Collision in Troy, MI, our Subaru has mercifully emerged good as new. The day after the 'Rex came home, I dropped it off at our trusty Subaru dealer – Hodges, in Ferndale, MI – for some routine maintenance, including finally getting its broken fuel door repaired. The whole pull-the-door-open-with-your-fingernails thing had become increasingly annoying, and I'm happy to report that everything now works as it should. And since it was part of a technical service bulletin, no money changed hands for this service. If there are any 2015 WRX owners in the greater Autoblog commentariat, I'd love to know if your cars have experienced the same issue. While at the dealer, I also signed the WRX up for one very special, very important update: the fitment of winter tires and – yes! – gold wheels. I have a strong personal belief that WR-Blue Subarus should come standard with gold wheels from the factory (like the Launch Edition STI), but since the Japanese automaker doesn't even offer these rollers on anything but the aforementioned, limited-edition STI, I took matters into my own hands.

Subaru Impreza gets smarter, safer and sharper in Japan

Subaru quietly gave the sedan and hatchback variants of the Impreza a mid-cycle update in Japan. Both body styles now wear a sharper front-end design, and they receive additional tech features. The current, fifth-generation Impreza made its global debut at the 2017 New York Auto Show. The 2020 model introduced online in Japan stands out with a revised front fascia characterized by a wide air dam that stretches the entire width of the bumper, chrome-look L-shaped trim on either end of it, and a revised grille. The changes made to the rear fascia are largely limited to tweaked lights. All told, you need to be an eagle-eyed car-spotter to tell the face-lifted model apart from its predecessor. Buyers seeking a sportier Impreza will be disappointed, Subaru is still taking its time developing the next WRX, but those who want a more high-tech car that helps them drive will be thrilled. Every Japanese-spec Impreza regardless of trim level is now equipped with EyeSight Touring Assist, a suite of electronic driving aids that handles accelerating, braking and steering in a wide range of conditions. These features don't make the Impreza autonomous in any way, and the driver still needs to stay focused on the road ahead, but they help when driving becomes tedious. There are other, more minor upgrades on the menu. The door mirrors now tilt down when the driver selects reverse, for example, and Subaru added a front-view camera.  In Japan, the Impreza carries on with either a 1.6-liter flat-four rated at 115 horsepower, or a 2.0-liter flat-four with 154 horses on tap. The entry-level model is front-wheel drive, surprisingly, but all-wheel drive is standard on higher trims. Regardless, both engines shift through a continuously variable transmission (CVT) that offers seven pre-programmed virtual gears. The Impreza lost its manual transmission in its home country years ago, though the company's American division continues to let buyers give a shift. Subaru hasn't announced plans to make similar changes to the American-spec model and tells us "it's too early for us to release information" about that, but it's not too far-fetched to speculate we'll get an updated Impreza sooner rather than later. We might see the model break cover during the 2019 edition of the Los Angeles Auto Show in November, and it could arrive in showrooms during the 2020 model year.