2017 Subaru Outback Limited 2.5: Test Drive

hey my good friend Sam hey Mart for test-driven TV today we're looking at the 2017 Subaru Outback this is a limited 2.5 litre four-cylinder and I have to tell you I'm pretty excited to test drive it because I've driven this vehicle before with the six-cylinder in it and it was a pretty nice vehicle but it was a little bit thirsty so I'm really curious to find out how much better fuel economy that you can get with this 2.5 liter four-cylinder and is it just as livable when it comes to power for everyday driving [Music] the Outback was we know it was redesigned for the 2015 model year therefore there's not a lot new to talk about here in terms of styling but there are a few features I want to point out the obvious is the fact that we're in an outback here so we've got the lower cladding down here in the skid plate treatment visually they give it a more off-road II look but when it comes to functionality this actually has active grille shutters here behind this grille you can't see them but what they do is they shed at higher speeds to make the car more aerodynamic and that helps a lot with the fuel economy something very popular with a lot of cars out there right now this one also has steering responsive fog lights they turn with you when you turn so in fog theoretically you get a little bit better visibility now I don't have fog here in the desert ever so we're just gonna have to take Subarus word for it as we come around the side here I want to point out the fact that we've got 18-inch alloy wheels here on the limited trim grade it's nice that they haven't gone larger like a lot of crossovers and suv's have because that still gives you a nice tall sidewall for a better ride when you're out actually going offroad it's just something that we've seen with a lot of crossover as you get 19 20 even 22 inch wheels you really can't take them off road for a comfortable ride it just sort of it's made for the street now this does have a few visual things here we've got this roof rack up here that gives it about a three to four inch taller look in silhouette when in reality that roof really ends here it's a nice look but it's also very functional because it's a real roof rack that you can actually strap a lot of accessories to better still here when you open the door both front and back the sills are very wide they've got steps on them so you can actually get up here and access whatever you've got on the roof quite easily and quite comfortably very well done out back here on the Outback it's a pretty familiar look just like up front you've got the built in spoiler here with a third row brake light up there and just like from the side view those roof rails up there really do give this a more bulky SUV look even though it is just a wagon lower fascia down here you've got the rugged black plastic look and this one here actually has the power liftgate here now you could open this in a number of ways you got a button inside there's a button right here on the bottom of it for and you've got the key fob now it doesn't have the motion activation like some vehicles do but what it does have is a height adjustment you can adjust the height at which it stops so when you go to press that button to shut it if you're a shorter person you don't have to reach up so high or if you're taller you can adjust it to open all the way so that you don't bump your head on it all the time that's a pretty nice feature I think the interior of the Outback is very much like a sedan or a car because well that's what this is it's not really a true SUV that's really large and tall this is a car that's lifted up so it feels like you're sitting in a car but the seat does have enough adjustment range where you can lift it up and give yourself that SUV like look out because you do have a little bit of extra height with the suspension height that's here so you still get that SUV Ness as far as the commanding view but as far as sitting here it feels like a car and what they've done with the design is very tasteful I think I like the dark black in here this comes with lighter colors but the dark black with this sort of a satin finish wood grain really looks good it is faux wood but it's very well done faux wood and the quality of the materials and here's very good I think it's really sort of mid grade it's not the kind of stuff you're gonna find an Audi but it doesn't have a lot of cheap chintzy things that you find in some of the mid grade competitors out there this does have everything that you can get with a few exceptions the new Touring model does offer a little bit more trim inside soft trim on the doors the steering wheels leather wrapping on the steering wheel are a lot of controls you got infotainment controls you've got Driver Safety assistance controls as well as paddle shifters here paddle shifters for the continuously variable transmission and they actually feel of reasonable quality they're not made of metal but they're not cheap chintzy plastic like you do find that some of the competitors it is tilt and telescoping but it's manually adjustable now these seats this is a 10-way power seat in the limited over here you have a four-way power seat for the passenger very comfortable they're firm seats and they're very supportive but not so firm that they're hard they really have a nice support level especially from side to side and I'm about 170 pounds and there's plenty of room here where I could be a bigger person and still find lots of comfort the center stack is very simply laid out you've got the in payment system up here and then you got HVAC down below it down here you've got a really nice area for your phone a big phone can fit in there and you've got the auxiliary and USB ports in addition to a 12 volt port down there so there's a lot of room for devices you've got really nice cup holders here and down here just behind the shifter are the controls for the hill descent control as well as the X mode all-wheel drive sitting back here in the backseat like I was saying up front very much like sitting in a sedan or a car because that's what this is based on legroom as you can see very very good these seats about half way four and half way back got plenty of room here Headroom pretty good too even though there's a sunroof that sometimes does take up a little bit of space now there are some good amenities back here we are in the limited so there's vents back here for HVAC there's heated seats that's always a nice thing one thing I'm surprised I don't see back here there's no power ports or USB ports just yet I assume Subarus probably going to add that at some point there is a center fold down armrest here that does have cupholders in it and these seat backs do adjust for race so that's nice now this doesn't slide not so necessary here because we don't have a third row now the cool thing is these seats of course as you'd expect you fold down in a 60/40 split there's levers back there that you can pull that actually allows you to lay those down now the cargo area back here very large because this isn't a crossover SUV that's a little bit shorter it's a full length wagon so you've got a nice big deck back there that allows you to put some pretty big things in there without even folding these seats down but once you do you've even got a larger area with a reasonably flat load floor now underneath that there's a spare tire as well always a good thing with a crossover or an SUV anything that's marketed to us is something to take out into the wild because a lot of cars now have that can of fix-a-flat and an inflator that isn't going to help you if it cut a tire open on a rock I'm very happy with this interior it's very tastefully done the materials are of a high quality as is the switchgear good storage and comfort and I just liked the fact that they kept it down to business they didn't try to over dazzle me here with a lot of different finishes and colors and textures it's just very simple therefore I give the interior 5 out of 5 stars the infotainment system here is a pretty good system I've liked it before in the other Bru's I've driven it's actually very similar if not identical in fact it is identical to a same system you're gonna find in some of the Toyota models out there because the two companies are a little bit related it works very well it is a capacitive touchscreen which means it's not a soft touch screen that you can really feel a little bit of softness to it's actually a hard plastic and it works very well the menus are easy to understand the graphics are pretty bright and visible the only time they're not is sometimes in sunlight because it's not shielded you do get a little bit of glare there now audio Harman Kardon system this is the upper level system here sounds very very good navigation easy to program and use on the go now the only thing I will say is we don't have apple carplay or Android auto here not a big deal to everybody but I do use that as my measurements infotainment gets four out of five stars what's under the hood here is something that sets Subaru apart from virtually every other automaker known to man except for Porsche and that is the boxer engine horizontally opposed four-cylinder this one 2.5 liters with 175 horsepower and 174 pound-feet of torque here made it to a continuously variable transmission or CVT it's rated here at 25 mpg city 32 mpg highway and 28 mpg combined the big crossover so I always ask the question how does it go well it's four-cylinder engine in a pretty big car so we're not talking sports car territory here when it comes to power delivery but it's very refined for being a four-cylinder that's working pretty hard I think and this continuously variable transmission actually has some nice features to it it has a manual mode here which allows you sort of get the feeling the year well in a real transmission and it gives you shift points that you can use these paddle shifters for which is pretty neat not all CVTs give you that and it actually works pretty convincingly look at that now it does still sort of act a little strange for a regular transmission you can still tell you got a CVT here but if you're out on the back road you want to sort of have a little bit of fun it's going to let you do it or even more important if you're off-roading and you want to make sure you can be in the right gear ratio for what you're doing you can have that control so I'm pretty pleased with this and that doesn't come out of my mouth very often for anything with a continuously variable transmission fuel economy is really what I was curious about with this because it's rated at 28 mpg combined that's for an all-wheel drive crossover SUV ish type vehicle that's that's pretty good now yes you do trade off a little bit with horsepower but let's be honest the flat six really doesn't have that much more horsepower surround 250 256 not competitive at all for a six-cylinder engine so my argument before was why not look at the four-cylinder at least you get the fuel economy while fuel economy is what I got here it's rated at 28 mpg I got 29 during my week with a 29 and a half to be exact but I usually round it down 29 mpg that's pretty good for an overall average with the air conditioner on at all times because of course it's still summer here in Arizona so I'm very impressed with this powertrain he gets 5 out of 5 stars on the topic of handling this rides and drives very much like the car it's based on it's got a nice quiet stable solid ride its sprung pretty stiffly I'd say but not so stiff that it rides rough which means it's pretty sharp when it comes to throwing it into a curve fully independent front suspension fully independent rear suspension no twist beams or anything like that and when they redesign this car in 2015 they did a lot of quiet tuning that actually pays off for road noise insulated front windshield a lot of sound deadening and the wind noise is pretty low to putting it into a curve works pretty well even though it does have electric power steering it's still pretty sharp and overall feel so Subaru always tells us that the Outback is a crossover SUV it has the capability in the Opera traction to really go pretty much all the places you can take full-blown SUVs right so we're gonna do something right here my mogul test what this is it's a mobile here where I get one front wheel off the ground and one of the rear wheels either off the ground or with very little traction it's a test that not all SUVs that are really good at four-wheel driving and off-roading it's they can't all achieve this especially most of the crossover midsize SUVs that this competes against but this has the ex mode here which really dials up the symmetrical all-wheel drive system for maximum traction articulation it can torque vector to single wheels as you go so this is a good way to see how that really works now I've also got the Hill Start Assist and the hill descent control on which should keep us from rolling back downhill when I take my foot off the throttle so here we go I'm just gonna drive up here nice and slow get into position here my front wheels dipping down alright alright so right now my front wheel over there is up in the air you can see this kind of teeter-totter in here my rear wheel back here very little traction so in a lot of vehicles we'd be stuck so I'm just gonna lay on the throttle nice and easy look at that child's play for this thing good deal the mobile test was fun now this is really the big leveler when it comes to any crossover her off-road vehicle and that is the desert washboard Road because out here at speed it doesn't matter whether it's Range Rover or a Wrangler this surface out here even though it is a really rough off-roading can make some of the best off-road vehicles feel like a pile is that what I'm finding out here is that this car is freakin amazing out here I'm not getting any rattling or shuddering in the structure no rattling in the suspension of the steering I'm getting a little bit of - and trim rattle when I really hit the rough stuff but this thing's holding together this solid is you'd expect most big SUVs and crossovers - it's just downright fun out here you can just blow and go out here like you couldn't a Jeep Wrangler almost amazing anyway now that I've just kind of gotten excited there I really have to say I'm amazed and impressed with this chassis overall it's very versatile it has a lot of talents and for the price of missing cells for it's hard to argue with their four chassis you gets five out of five stars one thing I want to point out is this car has the Subaru eyesight driver assistance system has a lot of different features way too many list here but one of them is lane departure warning and I've demonstrated this before and basically if you let your car view out of your lane over the line it lets you know now in the last test drive of this car two years ago I sort of complained a little bit because the system defaults to on every time you start the car therefore if you don't like it if you don't want the electronic mother-in-law of the backseat tapping on the shoulder and complaining about your driving you have to remember to turn it off every single time you get in the car which I wouldn't buy a car because of that but Subaru musta listened to either me or all the customers out there because now you can actually defeat the system a hundred percent of the time then they're great so I mean if you love the safety systems awesome awesome awesome but if you don't you can turn it off when it comes to the measure of quality as you can tell I was pretty impressed with this car overall it's got a solid structure rattle free good materials inside and out and the body fit and finish on the outside is exceptional you'd never know this car was built in Indiana it's got Japanese quality everywhere you look touch and feel very good he gets five out of five stars for our quality measure now on safety even though I don't score it I do want to point out that this is an IIHS Top Safety pick+ Subaru really has become almost the Volvo of well reasonably priced cars when it comes to safety they made it a big part of their brand this car obviously it gets good on all the crash tests plus it has a superior level of crash protection systems available alright my good friends wrapping it up for the 2017 subaru outback limited I have to say I'm very impressed very very impressed I like the packaging I like the offer capability and I really like the fact that you've got all the SUV capability inside but it still handles like a car you don't have that top heavy SUV drama that goes along with going all the way up into that realm and the thing is here I started out this review by saying I was really curious about the four-cylinder was it good to live with compared to the six and I gotta tell you if I were spending my own money on this car I'd buy the four because the power isn't that much less and as you can see the fuel economy is downright amazing for a vehicle with this kind of capability in fact I'm gonna go out on a limb here and I'd spend my own money on this car it goes on our I'd buy a list for 2016 so it's a four Subaru ever to go on a ride by a list but it's also the first car with the CVT ever to get there I don't know it's happening to me it's just I'm a little bit smitten with this car it really is a great package now pricing on this one thirty five thousand dollars and some change you can get into this thing for well less than thirty thousand dollars if you don't go with the limited and all the options and you still get the same driving experience and the same capability offroad so I really think that's a great deal so value I put it five stars when you put that in with everything we've already talked about where five stars for the review man very good I'm Sam here Marv for test driven TV I hope you enjoyed the ride a little personal story here just recently in fact I was test driving a new car at a media launch and I had a journalist friend with me and I was talking about what we talked about earlier in the video about these systems that default on when they come to the electronic nannies and how they drive me absolutely bonkers it's just a pet peeve of mine you know I like to be able to turn these systems off and leave them off and not have to turn them off every time I get in the car and so I was telling about this and he looks at me and he says well maybe it's just because you're a bad driver I'm looking at you you know I'm talking about you know I'm talking about you out there well look I'm a very good driver I just sometimes look at these lines as suggestive guides but I've never put a car off the racetrack at 140 miles an hour I'll give you that anyway if you like the test driver just saw click on the link right here and subscribe to our YouTube channel because I test drive one or two cars a week and we have a new video almost every other day there's always something new so stay tuned you

Channel: TestDrivenTV

Views: 212,974

Rating: 4.891892 out of 5

Keywords: Sam Haymart, 2017, Subaru, Outback, Legacy, 2.5, All-Wheel Drive, AWD, Limited, Off-Road, Test Drive, Road Test, Driving, Drives, Crossover, SUV, Comparison, Review, Handling, Acceleration, Horsepower, Specs, Specifications, Interior, Impressions, 4x4, Traction, id buy it

Id: -CFcLM8svx8

Length: 19min 10sec (1150 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 08 2016