UPDATE 1/13/20: This review has been updated with test results.
“We do a lot of research at Subaru,” says Outback car-line manager Peter Tenn, almost in apology as he shows his 20th consecutive slide of customer research charts to a crowd of just-post-coffee auto writers. But given the brand’s continued sales success—Subaru just concluded its 93-month run of consecutive monthly year-over-year sales growth—we doubt that the company is going to lay off the research any time soon.
Subaru isn’t interested solely in who its customers are (in the case of the Outback, it’s a 45-year-old married man with a college degree making slightly less than $100,000 a year); it also obsessively researches what those customers want. And what they want is for everything to stay mostly the same.
In the design process for this sixth-generation Outback, Subaru workshopped four different design ideas with potential customers. And wouldn’t you know it, those folks liked the one that looks almost exactly like the outgoing model. Even design details that Subaru touts as being new, such as the scalloped black rocker panels meant to evoke the sole of a hiking boot, have roots in the previous generation’s design.
Inside, more has changed.
An available vertically oriented 11.6-inch infotainment display is the centerpiece of the interior, except in the base model, which makes do with a two-screen setup. Subaru uses two processors to keep response times quick. One controls media functions, and the other deals with climate.
The Outback retains knobs for volume and tuning as well as physical controls for adjusting the cabin temperature (although Subaru has switched from dials to buttons for that task). In our experience, the new infotainment system was quick and useful, but some vehicle controls, like the ones that activated the off-road driving mode, were buried in a hard-to-navigate menu structure.
Subaru’s available driver-monitoring system, introduced on the 2019 Forester, uses face-scanning software to recognize up to five drivers and recall preferences for things such as seating position and climate control, a bit of convenience tech for Outbacks with a lot of drivers.
Subaru heavily revised the Outback’s base engine, employing some 90 percent new parts. Also used by the Forester, this 2.5-liter flat-four now makes 182 horsepower. The Ascent’s 260-hp turbocharged 2.4-liter boxer-four is used in the Outback’s three upper trim levels, which are denoted by an XT badge.
All models come with a continuously variable automatic transmission (CVT) that can mimic an eight-speed automatic. That’s a novel programing improvement over the previous generation’s CVT, which imitated a six-speed. And every Outback is all-wheel drive, naturally.
The Outback now rides on the more rigid Subaru Global Platform, which can absorb 40 percent more energy in a frontal collision than the outgoing platform, says Subaru. The suspension is updated, too, with hollow anti-roll bars in the front and rear for weight savings, though the strut front and multilink rear layouts are unchanged. The car is 1.4 inches longer and 0.6 inch wider than last year’s model.
The added length went to the rear seat, which offers an additional 1.4 inches of legroom. Changes to the cargo-measuring procedures mean that the 2020 Outback’s cargo space behind the rear seat, 33 cubic feet, is nominally smaller than last year’s, but Subaru says that when measured using the same method, the new hold is one cube larger than in the 2019 model.
Subaru says that a quarter of Outback owners actually use their cars’ off-road capabilities, making it the second-most off-roaded vehicle in the company’s line-up, behind the Crosstrek. That’s far from a quorum, but it’s enough a part of the brand’s image that our assigned drive route was heavily biased towards one-lane dirt roads and across unmaintained California ranch lands.
2020 Subaru Outback Pricing Starts under $27,000
The car didn’t perform any magic tricks. The most technical move we executed was an uphill left turn with the left-rear tire off the ground. But with 8.7 inches of ground clearance, the Outback felt capable and sure-footed on gravel, grass, steep hills, and rutted two-tracks. We managed to initiate some wheelslip in a sweeping dirt-road bend, but it took effort. This car doesn’t have much of Subaru’s rally heritage baked in, but it took us places we wouldn’t have been comfortable going to in a Buick Regal TourX or a Ford Edge. And though we needed no further proof that press junkets are carefully crafted to glorify the model on display, driving the Outback on a dirt road 100 feet above the Pacific Ocean without another soul in sight made it seem insane to think of buying a car that couldn’t get us there.
But most people drive on paved roads most of the time. And there, the Outback is less inspiring. The car’s ride is fairly smooth and compliant, if occasionally less responsive than we’d like. But the 182-hp engine feels adequate at best, and the CVT isn’t very adept at finding torque; you’ll want to switch into the manual shift mode when accelerating uphill or passing on the freeway. During our testing, that engine propelled the Outback to 60 mph in 8.5 seconds and through the quarter mile in 16.7 seconds at 84 mph. That’s an acceptable effort in a car this size, but it won’t have you clamoring to get back in the driver’s seat.
The 260-hp turbo four is, predictably, a much more willing partner, and made it to 60 mph in 6.3 seconds in our hands. That engine brings much-needed extra thrust when performing a pass. In our top-gear 30-to-50-mph test, the turbo is 1.1 second quicker than an Outback equipped with the base engine. Despite its more powerful engine, the XT doesn’t feel much gutsier than the base model from a stop and at around town speeds. And the 0.78 g of lateral grip that we measured on the skidpad spoke to its thoroughly average handling limits.
Incrementalism.
Subaru’s model overhauls are all about incrementalism. It makes sense. People hate change, and Subaru loves giving its people what they want. The Outback is Subaru’s best-selling model, and the new one is better than the old one. It’s now more spacious in the back seat, more powerful, and has more modern features. It doesn’t feel like a revelation, but it doesn’t need to. If there’s a ceiling to the demand for Subarus, we haven’t found it yet. We can’t blame the company for building profitable, consistent products, even if they are a little boring. And if a sea change comes, Subaru will be ready for it. It’s probably already running a study.
Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com
