2009 Subaru Impreza Wrx Wagon 4-door 2.5l on 2040-cars

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Toyota, Lexus dominate KBB's Best Resale Value Awards

Toyota and Lexus stormed the 2014 Kelley Blue Book Best Resale Value Awards, winning a combined 18 categories including best brand and best luxury brand. This marks the third year in a row that both automakers have won the Brand and Luxury Brand resale value awards. In all, Toyota won 11 categories and Lexus won seven.
Honda made a good showing, as well, winning two segments (Accord Plug-In Hybrid and Civic Si) and putting one car on the top-10 Best Resale Value list (CR-V). Chevrolet did even better, winning two segments (with the V6 Camaro and the Corvette) and placing three cars on the top-10-overall list (again, the Camaro and Corvette, plus the Silverado 1500).
The other winners came from Jeep, Dodge, Infiniti, Subaru and Audi. To give you a clearer picture of the Toyota and Lexus domination, their 18 mentions represents more than half of the 34 awards (including the top-10-overall list).

To the end of the world in a Subaru

On a quiet beach in southern Argentina, I stood in awe facing the Desdemona, a massive cargo ship that wrecked ashore in the mid-1980s and has remained untouched for the subsequent 30 years. In the intervening time, Desdemona was not vandalized, nobody broke her down and sold the parts for scrap, and unlike what you'd expect in the United States, no one set up shop to sell memorabilia in addition to a $5-beach entrance fee. This is only one of a thousand gorgeous vistas that make up Patagonia, the southernmost part of South America and, indeed, the end of the world. I was there to drive Subarus along dirt two-track roads and gravel highways on an epic journey from El Calafate to Ushuaia. Subaru would have you believe that this sort of rugged wilderness is the natural habitat for its cars. Whether or not that is a stretch, the Subies proved to be up to the task of trekking Patagonia. But I fully expected that from the get-go. What I didn't expect was how every part of this journey – the cars, the location, the people – would combine to form one of the greatest travel experiences of my life. View 85 Photos The end of the world. Patagonia is gorgeous, vast, brilliant. And those words don't even really do it justice. The plains, the lakes, the mountains, the forests all feel like every color is more vibrant, every detail is sharper. It's like looking at the world through an Instagram feed, and then realizing that every photo has the "no filter" hashtag. The journey started on Valentine's Day, with senior video producer Chris McGraw and I flying to Atlanta, followed by a 12-hour flight to Buenos Aires. That's where we met the rest of the group, and spent a day relaxing and exploring the Argentine streets and shops. "It's like looking at the world through an Instagram feed, and then realizing that every photo has the 'no filter' hashtag." But we still weren't at our start point. From Buenos Aires, we hopped a flight to El Calafate, about 1,500 miles southwest. It's a common entrance point to Patagonia for tourists and explorers because of its proximity to the Perito Moreno Glacier, a stunning site we visited the next day. Watch our earlier update video to see more about the glacier – an ice formation three times the size of Manhattan (and growing!). If Patagonia is on your bucket list of vacation destinations, this glacier is a mandatory stop. There's a boardwalk that runs along the lakes, leading right up to the face of the glacier.

Subaru is America's third most off-roaded brand

When you think of iconic off-road brands, where does Subaru fall on your radar? Somewhere in the middle? Perhaps near the bottom? Don't worry, you're not alone. Until recently spending some time in Bend, OR, where we drove the all-new 2015 Subaru Outback, we never really pegged the Japanese automaker to be a highly lauded brand among off-road enthusiasts, despite many of the company's products actually being quite capable when the going gets rough.
But the data says we're wrong. According to a 2013 J.D. Power study, Subaru vehicles have some of the highest use off road compared to other brands - of course "off road" here just means anything not on a paved road, so even gravel trails and tame two-tracks count in these statistics. Nearly 29.5 percent of its cars are used on trails and dirt roads, with only the Ram and Jeep brands besting that statistic, at 30.2 and 31.0 percent, respectively. Said another way, Subaru sold 424,683 vehicles in the US in 2013, meaning that some 125,281 saw off-road use. Mainstream brands like GMC, Ford and Chevrolet all trail Subaru, and even Land Rover comes in at less than 20 percent.
Some 34.7 percent of Outbacks are taken off paved roads, according to J.D. Power data.