Great Cars Except The Marketing People Must Have Corrupted The Designers!
Subaru changes things for no apparent reason with each redesign. For example, on my 2008, one turns the wiper knob forward to increase the frequency of the intermittent wipers but on the 2012 is is just the opposite (took me two years to get used to it and now I dread what they are going to do to the new ones!). They now have that absurdly designed roof rack that does not give one ANY external hooks to tie down something that is too wide to get at the hooks inside the rack. Their promotions keep highlighting the outdoors value of the Outback but they continue to make the Outback less outdoor sports friendly by eliminating the solid frame hooks underneath each corner of the bumper that are safety-critical for the recommended "4-point" tie down of a kayak (i.e., two ropes around the belly of the boat then one bow and one stern to hooks below the bumper)! They put that useless manual shift option on an automatic transmission that when used on the steep hills crossing the mountains to Grand Teton Nat. Park, the car went into a wild shimmy as very slow speeds and the dealer says nothing is wrong with the car. Worst of all, they put cheap tires on the new models. The continental tires that came with my 2012 were so bad that my new Outback drove like a truck and the road noise of those tires outdid all of the quiet ride of the Outback. The tires and some persistent rattles in the tailgate and rear quarter-panel caused me to almost trade the care after just one year to cut my losses. Thanks to my wonderful salesman passing on a replacement tip, I was able to get Micheline "Defender" tires and then the car actually rode like a car instead of a truck and did so quietly! Why o why put a great big tachometer in the dash that is absolutely unnecessary for ANY competent driving either for fun or for serious?! The driver experience for most of us (who do not have the fantasy of being a NASCAR driver wannabe) would be much better served with a larger speedometer that is well lit under all driving conditions (my 2008 speedometer was unreadable on a sunny day!). Instead of something on the dash that is at least marginally useful like an AMP charging meter, they put a meter that says you are using gasoline when you depress the gas pedal and and not using gas when you do not do so and are going down a hill!!! Finally, they give us more headroom that is only useful for maybe folks who stand about 6 feet 5, making the car just tall enough to make it difficult to get kayaks on top of that useless roof rack!
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