As you may recall, we bought a 2013 Subaru Outback 2.5i CVT for my wife just over a month ago to replace her Honda Odyssey. About a week later, we drove it to Florida for 4 nights at the beach and 6 nights at Disney World. When I say "we drove," what I really mean is that I drove it.First car I've driven with a CVT that works the way it's suppoed to work. And it's fucking weird, but once you get used to it you wonder why it hasn't always been like this. And then you wonder why the fuck it comes with shifter paddles.
The CVTness highlights the 2.5 liter boxer 4's agricultural tones, unfortunately, and the lack of power means you're at the hight of those agricultural tones for longer periods of time than you might prefer. That said, the car is not dangerously underpowered (it's got quite an agressive tip in, FWIW), but more would be nice...and it's available if you want to pay for it. On the way down to FL, the low oil light came on for a little while. Checked the oil at the next stop and it was fine. Light hasn't been on since.
It rides well. Poised and very comfortable for long family road trips. Nothing fantastic, but nothing objectionable other than the steering seemed to get a little wandery above 60mph. It just felt like I had to make more mini corrections than in most cars. Taking hands off the wheel for a stretch and the car would track straight or with the road's crown, depending, but with hands on...it was just not quite right. Earlier years of this gen Outback had some more significant steering issues and they've made changes, but...dunno.
For a stripper model, the stereo seems pretty nice. Comprehensive, yet simple, steering wheel controls. It has bluetooth, a USB port and aux audio input. I bought a new 128GB USB drive to put all our music on to plug into the USB port and when it didn't work right, I learned that it has all kinds of limits and configuration requirements that make it all but impossible to work with large libraries. As a backup, I restored my old 32GB iPhone 4 to new and loaded it with as much music as would fit. Using an iPod/iPhone lets you control it with the device or through the head unit, which is nice. While we were in Florida, we left the iPhone in the console box the entire time and never had any heat related issues, which was not my expectation. The car also has 3 regular power ports, 1 at the bottom of the center stack, one in the console armrest and one in the way back near the liftgate.
Ergonomics are all pretty good. Seats are comfy and supportive. Back seat has plenty of room to keep enough space between two tweenage girls for 1,000 miles at a time. Cargo space and the cubby spaces below the floor are large enough that we could pack for the trip and keep everything beneath the cargo shade (although the girls had quit a bit of shit with them in the back seat).
We got about 26 MPG over the trip, cruising near 80 most of the way. I was hoping for a little better (~28), but oh well.
While my wife didn't do any of the driving on the trip, she's put about 1,000 miles on it now herself and she seems to be liking it quite a bit. I'm pretty happy with our choice.