Gone fishing
New CVT gearbox delivers an even smoother ride, a good car for long trips
Plenty of legroom and interior is well put together 
Steering feels numb, suspension can be slightly hard Does having all-wheel drive mean that you can take your family out for a good time?
By Andy Hum
PACK YOUR BAGS and head to the great outdoors. If only. You’d probably sooner end up in a four-by-four metre concrete room with a huge metal gate if you did try that in Singapore, simply because the “great outdoors” we have here, where vehicles can enter, have been permanently booked by a bunch of people who call themselves “Ministry of Defence”. And it’s really not the best idea to intrude into their space, especially while they’re ‘having fun’.
So there really isn’t any legal, scenic spot here where you can explore with your adventurous all-wheel drive; the next best spot is up north, where, according to my statistics, the chances of you losing your precious car are inexplicably higher than the risk of being eaten by some wild animal. What good, then, is a car like the Subaru Outback?
Well, for one, you could head off the beaten path if you wanted to, thanks to its higher-than-average ground clearance of 200mm and all-wheel drive system. And since having to do that legally means you would have to head north, comfort will be important – and that’s where the Subaru doesn’t disappoint.
Forget the brand’s sporty image – the Outback now comes with Subaru’s ‘Lineartronic’ gear system, a marketing term for their continuously variable transmission, reinforcing the fact that the Outback is more of a comfort-cruiser than an adrenaline-pumping sports estate, or even a macho, stone-crushing proper off-roader.
Though its suspension could get a little more plush, it will do a good job of keeping your children in the back happy, and probably could leave them snoozing all the way to your destination. The interior even delivers a sense of luxury and quality, which will undoubtedly leave you happy about what you’ve paid for.
But if you’re planning to stay overseas for a few nights and are carrying more than the usual amount of luggage, some clever packing skills might be needed. Its boot floor is high, presumably to accommodate its double wishbone rear suspension, so loading up with more bags could mean obstructing the view through your rear view mirror.
On a highway, though, you might find yourself too busy enjoying its 2.5-litre horizontally-opposed engine to look back. It makes 167bhp and 229Nm of torque, and delivers it so smoothly that we had at times wondered if the car was accelerating at all. That pairs it nicely with the way the Outback drives, too – something of a relaxed manner, although its suspension get a little softer, and behaves nothing close to how its other more sporty siblings might.
One thing’s for certain – the Outback is proof you don’t need to spend that much money to get European standards of interior quality and comfort. If your priorities are a smooth engine, plenty of space and legroom plus a reasonably refined ride and you drive mostly on roads, not dirt tracks, it’s worth putting this down on your list of considerations.
