Here's Why the 2020 Subaru Outback Is America's Favorite Wagon

This is the

2020

Subaru Outback and it is the most popular truck in America. In fact, the Outback is so popular that it sells 20 more units than the next most popular truck, which is also a Subaru. The Outback has been completely redesigned for the

2020

model year and today I will try to find out why people love it so much. I borrowed this 2020 Outback from Subaru Orange Coast which is a Subaru dealership

here

in Orange County Southern California that has all the latest Subaru models including all the new ones and for

subaru

t

here

are a lot of them you have the new forester, the new crosstrack, the new ascend and now this the new

outback

, although the new

outback

looks a lot like the old outback, it has been completely redesigned for 2020, so it is a completely new car, the new model is a bit larger than the old Outback, but all other basic elements are the same.

All-wheel drive is standard. The base engine is a 2.5-liter four-cylinder that makes about 180 horsepower. up to a turbo four-cylinder that makes around 260 horsepower, prices for this car start around 27,500 for the base model and if you get all the options and choose the highest trim level, it can cost a little over forty thousand dollars, so what exactly does it do? The Outback competes against good quality SUVs, mainly if you want the practicality of an SUV but a more car-like driving experience, you can choose the Outback over SUVs like the Toyota Highlander, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Ford Explorer or the Honda CR-V, and many people do just that.

However, it's worth noting that the Outback only has two rows of seating, unlike some of its rivals which offer three rows of seating, but anyway today I'm going to review the new Outback and try to find out why the people love this. a lot, first I'm going to take you on a tour of the new interior and show you all of its interesting quirks and features, then I'm going to take it out on the road and drive it and then I'm going to give it an excellent rating and to find out more of my thoughts on the new interior , click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer, where I've also put together a list of my

favorite

old

wagon

s currently for sale on autotrader.

Well, I'm going to start with the quirks and features of the interior by talking about an interesting quirk of this interior. You've got it in the mirrors, specifically the fact that there's a little light here now to you, it just looks like a light, but if you look closer, you can see that it's actually the illuminated Subaru logo, so you're thinking, Well, that's the blind spot monitor that lets you know if a car is in your blind spot, but it's not. The blind spot monitor is on the inside of the mirror it is completely separate from this thing so what is this illuminated

subaru

logo?

The answer is just a decoration. Some cars turn on like headlights to help you find them in a parking lot or other exterior marker lights. The little Subaru logo on the mirrors just lights up when you unlock the car, when you open the door, so you know you have a Subaru, I guess, and then on the outside of the interior, I want to talk about the exterior styling. Personally, I never thought the last two generations of the Outback were particularly attractive cars, but if consumers agreed with me, they clearly didn't seem to care because they still bought Outbacks in absolutely massive numbers.

Now Subaru is a smart company and they are conservative too. company and that means they like to keep things the same if they are running, so you can see the exterior styling of this car, very similar to the outgoing Outback, at a glance you might not even realize it has changed. I had to look for it for a second. It's time just to make sure it's redesigned properly and indeed it is, but they keep the look pretty similar because it's been successful, so why change it? While the exterior of the Outback looks quite similar to the outgoing model, the biggest change is on the interior and specifically with the infotainment screen now being vertical, this is a change I'm seeing more and more in new cars, the new Ford explorer, the new ram volvo mclaren tesla trucks all have vertical screens, now there are some benefits.

To make the screen this way, that's how everyone's smartphone is oriented, so we're already used to looking at screens from a vertical perspective like this, so it makes some sense and obviously the central control console of the car has shape. vertically between the two seats and that also helps it make sense and Subaru's system makes the most of its vertical space. The biggest advantage of this system is that it is very easy to see everything because the screen is now very large and it is really intuitive. uses most of the controls, almost everything is where you think it would be and everything fits on the big screen you wish was there, so this is Subaru's new infotainment technology as an example of the benefits of the screen big, just take a look.

On this home screen, all the apps and icons are there, it's very easy to see where they are all the same. Go to the radio again, everything is very easy to see, very big, very intuitive, just press, everything is simple, same with the map again. Large map screen enabled by this vertical screen that can become larger than many horizontal screens because it simply has more room to go down to the center console. It works great, but for all the benefits of Subaru's new infotainment system there's also a I can think of two drawbacks worth mentioning, one is the fact that the system can take a long time to respond when you just press the apps .

It's pretty fast, but look here on the map, you can see that I move my finger around the map it doesn't track very fast anywhere near as fast as a smartphone there's a big lag and a big lag when you move your finger across the screen this It's not something you get in many other new cars, but one drawback is that this system just isn't as fast as some rivals' systems, and another drawback to Subaru's infotainment system: They've moved too many climate controls on the screen. . You can see that the only hard buttons for the climate controls are adjust the temperature and then the front. and defogger and rear defogger, that's it and that means that if you want to change the amount of airflow, you have to go into the screen and you can see it's very small.

You have this huge new screen, but changing the amount of air that comes out is that small. The small button at the bottom is not very well thought out, but even worse are the heated seats that are no longer buttons. I hate when car manufacturers get rid of the heated seat buttons because it's so simple and it's something you want to turn on instantly, but on this one in the car, you have to press the heated seat first, that doesn't turn them on, you just open a menu and then you can turn them on and it's too many steps, it's too frustrating, that's not how heated seats should be, it should be a lot simpler than that, those are my two big drawbacks to a very good infotainment screen , very useful and very great and then I want to move on to some of the interesting quirks and features of the Subaru infotainment system which, by the way, they call StarLink.

Since I haven't played with this system yet, an interesting quirk is that it allows you to set the cruise control acceleration, so that when you have the adaptive cruise control on the car in front of you take off, you can set how fast it takes off. follow your car, you can choose. eco and then you will have very slow acceleration or you can choose dynamic and it will accelerate very quickly to fill each gap and you can configure most adaptive cruise control systems only have one non-configurable setting but in this one there are four settings that you can choosing how fast your car accelerates when you're not driving and then another interesting quirk of this infotainment system, you turn on the car and you can see it's pretty normal, a little star link logo appears, there's a disclaimer that you must accept.

Pretty standard on most cars, but when you turn this car off, the infotainment system turns off and then it says see you later, which I think is a weird way of saying goodbye, not goodbye, see you later, see you later. See you, thank you, Subaru, see you and then another interesting one. One quirk of this infotainment system is that there is a feature that you can activate called the primary vehicle motion monitor and it's kind of cool, basically the way it works is you stop at a traffic light and then you start texting or eating or whatever people do in the car. in front of you drives away now in a normal car, you just sit there and don't realize until you look up, but if you have the primary vehicle motion monitor on in a subaru, it will actually beep and warn you that there is traffic.

As you move, you better get moving and that allows you to see if traffic is moving away and you can move faster even if you are distracted. It's a good idea and the next step, when you turn on the interior, you can see it on the top of the dashboard. In the driver's field of vision there are these lights that turn green, yellow and red at random. Those are the eyesight monitor lights, and if you're about to hit something, they'll flash green, yellow, or red and let you know. You're about to hit something and of course that's accompanied by a sound that's not particularly interesting.

Several automakers do that. The strange thing here is the fact that you can turn off certain colors of those lights individually, so if you don't want to see the green lights come on. You can turn off the green ones if you don't want to see the red lights come on when you're about to hit something. You can turn off the red ones. You can configure which lights you want to turn on using the infotainment system. something strange and next we move on to the gauge cluster in the new Outback and specifically this screen in the middle of the gauge cluster that has some interesting quirks.

Now it always shows this image of your car from behind with a road. is in front of him and that image basically shows his safety systems, if they are active, if they are currently in use, the interesting thing here is that when he brakes, that little car on the screen, its brake lights come on, which is so interesting that you press the brakes, the car's brake lights on the screen come on, why do they do that? Why do you have to see the small representation of your car on the screen? The brake lights come on when the brake lights are turned on.

I'm not so sure. but they do and then there's another interesting thing on this gauge cluster screen, if you scroll through all the information screens one of them shows you the auto start and stop statistics so that's the system that turns off the car at traffic lights to save fuel. I actually show you how many minutes it was off and how many gallons it has saved as a result, as you can see this car has been off for four minutes in one second and it has saved 0.032 gallons. Now a lot of people tell me no. I don't love that the auto start/stop function turns off all the time, but maybe if you show people exactly how much more efficient and environmentally friendly it makes them, they'll be more willing to use it and I guess that's Subaru's theory in giving you the automatic start. stop stats now, then move around the cabin at the front, a couple of other interesting quirks and features, one is this little button to the right of the gear selector on the center console that says see, if you press it it instantly brings up a front camera on the Infotainment Screen I love this idea that it's so easy to have a front camera appear in case you're pulling into a parking spot and you're not sure where the parking line or curb or car is that is in front of you. it just shows up instantly, I think more cars should have an easy access front camera like this now, unfortunately I have to say that although I love that part of the camera technology, the camera itself is not of a particularly high quality high you can see the resolution is really not that good and it's the same with the rear view camera you put in and again the resolution really could be better considering how far car camera systems have come and how dedicated it is Subaru to safety, you'd really think they'd improve. those cameras, I also personally think that a car at this price should probably have a 360 degree top down camera system or at leasta few more camera angles, particularly a family car that has so many other safety features, I think Subaru drops the ball. with the camera technology, but I like the idea of ​​that front camera when you just touch a little button and then another interesting element in the interior interior is the center console storage area.

You can open it like a normal center console storage and you can put things in there, it is reasonably large or you can see on the latch that there are actually two handles, you can also open the top and there is a small storage area there for similar papers, you can save your log there or something. simple but you have two different options when it comes to storage in the center console and speaking of storage, in the new Outback you obviously have a glove box like all cars like this, but above the glove box and above the green stitching there is a small party trick It actually has a storage tray in there, so if you want to keep a pen in there or something simple that you don't have to open the glove box to access, you can put it right there in this kind of additional storage area and then another item worth the sorrow.

If you look out front, near the rearview mirror, you can see that there are two things sticking out of the roof that kind of impede your visibility a little bit if you plan on looking up at the sky. So what exactly are these things? Because? Here, those are actually the cameras from Subaru's vision system that always monitors the cars in front of you to make sure you don't hit the adaptive cruise control, all of those things are up there and as a result, you can see that there's this little sticker that says don't put your hand here because if you do you'll block the camera system, that's where they're always looking and examining the world and then we move on to the back seat of the new Outback where I have to say it's a bit narrower than I expected.

I said this because the Outback is not a small car. It's actually quite big, so sitting back here I expected to have very generous legroom, but I really don't know. The front passenger seat is exactly where I would put it and now you can see my knees are touching it. I don't think so. here it's tight in the back, I'm not squished in place, it's just a little smaller than I thought and if you're considering one of these instead of a midsize SUV, I have to say the back seat is a little more rav4 than a highlander a little more crv than pilot smaller than medium that said, the back seat is excellent, i.e. pretty ordinary, nothing particularly crazy back here, but you have everything you want and need, you have two climates Vents back here to blow air into the rear passengers.

You also have two different USB ports so you can charge devices. Good for the kids, obviously, and this particular interior has heated rear seats and you can see that you can press the buttons and turn it on. which is also a good feature as many of these are sold in cold climates again, nothing particularly notable but good features back here, a very competent and well executed rear seat, although perhaps a little tight and finally we move on. to the cargo area in the new Outback, which is actually quite large. The complaints I had about the back seats being a little tight, the exact opposite is true back here.

This is a very large cargo area considering the size of this vehicle and is quite impressive. Here now is an interesting feature in the cargo area of ​​the new Outback. You can see on the sides of the cargo area, you have these little door handles that look like things. Pull them and they will drop the back seats. The one on the right lowers the right rear part. seats, the one on the left obviously occupies the left rear seat and that's a really nice feature if you're trying to load something large into your cargo area, the last thing you want to do once you realize you're going to have to put the seats . to get down is to go around the door, open it, put the seat down, go around to the other side, open the door, put the seat down, it's a little cumbersome, but here you pull these latches and the seats fold down now, unlike some kind of high end luxury vehicles you can't fold the seats using these latches, it's all mechanical so if you want to fold them you'll have to go to each individual door and fold them that way and then one towards the other.

One interesting element in the cargo area is the fact that it has a power outlet back here on the right side. You can see it's a small cigarette lighter style outlet, which is a very useful feature, although I personally think it would be even more useful if they gave us a household style outlet with traditional prongs so you could plug something in back here, a phone charger, a toaster, but this is great, it's better than nothing and finally we move under the hood into the new interior and you can see the engine. Down here, as I mentioned before, this is the Outback xt, which means it has a turbocharged 4-cylinder engine that makes 260 horsepower and about 275 pound-feet of torque.

This engine is also used in the larger Subaru Ascent, so those are pretty healthy numbers for this one. In fact, those numbers are pretty strong if you compare the Outback to compact crossovers like the Honda CRV, which max out at about 190 horsepower, but if you compare the Outback to midsize crossovers like the Toyota Highlander, its power numbers They're pretty standard now. I mentioned that there is also a base engine in this car, it's a 2.5-liter four-cylinder with around 180 horsepower, so you can choose which one you prefer. One interesting thing under the hood of this car is the fact that there is no plastic cover for the engine, so many modern cars have a lot of things completely covered in plastic, but not this.

There is no giant plastic cover that says subaru in huge letters. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find the word Subaru or a Subaru logo anywhere on this engine. compartment, they are just exposed parts the new toyota supra has more bmw logos under the hood than this subaru has subaru logos and those are the quirks and features of the 2020 subaru outback, now it's time to take it out on the road and see how it looks. drives well driving the Outback now my first impression of this powertrain is that it's pretty good for the size of the car it's pretty reasonable no complaints although I think the base powertrain I haven't driven the new Outback with the base powertrain . but i imagine it must feel a little forced the outback is kind of a mid sized suv in terms of size it has standard all wheel drive and that powertrain only 180 horsepower probably isn't that much power the thing about this car is that Ultimately, it's not particularly exciting or exciting or wow, that's crazy and in this case that's actually a good thing.

You know when you get into an expensive luxury car you want it to surprise you, you wanted to have some features that are special and unique and you want to be nobody. more has done it, but the buyers of this car are not like that, they prefer a durable, tried and tested car, and you don't need to have all this cutting edge stuff to make them happy and subaru knows that and they know that formula and they stick to it her and this car is just another great example of that in terms of the driving position it's very nice and comfortable to sit here the seat feels great you won't get the elevated driving position that you get with a suv and that's an opinion divided: the people who buy them, they don't want, they specifically don't want an SUV, they don't want to deal with all that, they think it's too big, the people who drive this. car and end up in a station

wagon

, they want to sit higher and I think that's one of the distinctive things about the interior that people have to decide if they like it, but one thing is absolutely certain: it definitely drives more like a car than in a SUV, the steering feels a little more comfortable, the car seems a little more compact to me, frankly, than most SUVs when you drive it, and obviously being lower to the ground, you don't feel the body moving.

It's definitely more of a car in terms of driving experience sitting inside the car, you don't hear much outside noise, you hear some maybe a little more than I expected, but overall it's pretty quiet, does a good job of blocking. Ultimately, it's not a car with a lot of crazy things that you'll end up saying about it if you've driven Outbacks before and I suspect most Outback owners have or most potential Outback customers have, so it's just more of the same thing you have better technology in this one, you know, a little more interior space, a little more comfortable, but overall, it's exactly what you're used to, which is a good car, a good car, Durable, excellent, nothing that will surprise you. or send you over the edge with "Oh my god, this is amazing, but it's just a good car and that's why 250,000 people a year buy these things and really that's the whole story about the interior, it drives decently, it's a, It's a A car that won't surprise you, actually won't surprise you much, but if you want to have a car for a long period of time and a lot of super owners keep their cars for a while, if you want a car like that.

From tried and tested, durable and simple, this is a good car for that, so that's the 2020 Subaru Outback. The Outback is America's

favorite

truck and it's easy to see why you get the practicality of an SUV, but without the SUV and although the SUVs are really cool right now some people would just rather have a truck and an overwhelmingly large number of those people get the interior and now it's time to give the interior a doug score starting with the weekend categories and the Interior design is average okay, nothing special, gets a 5 out of 10. Acceleration from 0 to 60 with the turbo engine is 6.1 seconds and gets a 3 out of 10.

Handling is average for the segment and gets a 3 out of 10. Fun factor is low, it's an automatic family van and it's not very fun by design and it gets a factor of one out of ten ultimately great and it's just not. It's like the premier suburban car in much of the country and no one ever bought one of these because it's cool, which is good because it gets one out of ten for an overall weekend score of 13 out of 50. Below are the categories and daily features. It's decently well equipped, but nothing to write home about and gets a 6 out of 10.

Comfort is average for the segment and gets a 7 out of 10. Quality is good, interior is average or a little above, but reliability It's strong and gets a 7 out of 10. Practicality is good with a spacious interior and standard all-wheel drive, but no third row beats it. I went down a bit and got an 8 out of 10. Finally value and works well, but not really great. My test car cost around 40,000 and that's a lot of money considering the interior still lacks some important features like a 360 camera. It gets a 7. out of 10 for an overall daily score of 35 out of 50.

Added up and the score of Doug's 48 out of 100, which puts the Outback here against other family vehicles I've tested, ties the climb, but only because the Outback has a higher score. Weekend score due to better acceleration. The Ascent has a higher daily score due to its larger interior overall, although the Outback holds its own here and beats the Toyota Rav4, which is probably the Subaru's closest competition on this list.