2023 Subaru Outback turbo (inc. 0-100km/h & autonomous modes) review

CarExpert

Subaru actually listened! They have added a turbocharger to the Outback, which was the only issue we had with it. Paul Maric tests out the 2023 Subaru Outback Touring XT to see if it's any better now that it's turbocharged.  Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE  More Subaru content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/subaru More Subaru Outback content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/subaru/outback  Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Exterior 01:10 Interior 03:22 Infotainment 04:39 Safety Tech 06:11 Practicality 07:08 On the Road 10:36 Driver aids 16:21 Performance 18:41 Verdict 20:37  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #subaru #outback #review #turbo

Transcript

00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. One of my favourite non-SUV kind of SUVs is the Subaru Outback because

00:06 it's a wagon but it's kind of SUV capable. The only complaint I had with it though was

00:11 that it lacked a little bit of punch and Subaru has now listened. They've fitted a turbocharger

00:16 to this engine and upped the towing capacity as well. So today I'm going to do a detailed

00:21 review of the new Subaru Outback XT to see whether it is all the better for being turbocharged now,

00:28 but it will cost you a little bit extra. It's a five grand price premium for the turbo over

00:32 the naturally aspirated version. This here is the top spec version, it's called the Touring,

00:36 it's priced at around $55,000. If that's too expensive, the turbo range kicks off at around

00:42 the $52,000 mark. This competes with things like the Honda CR-V, Mazda CX-5, Toyota RAV4,

00:49 it's that size of vehicle but obviously a wagon instead of an SUV. Today we're going to do a

00:54 detailed review of this car so if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review,

00:57 you can use the time codes on the screen or if you're on YouTube, you can scroll down and use

01:01 the chapters below and don't forget to subscribe to the channel, hit the bell icon because that's

01:05 going to tell you every single time we drive a turbocharged Subaru. Let's talk exterior design,

01:12 you've got nine colours to pick from and here's some good news, they're all free of charge.

01:16 I really like the look of this, I mentioned before that it's my favourite non-SUV SUV because

01:21 it actually just looks like a wagon, it's lifted up off the ground so you get all the

01:25 practicalities of a wagon without needing to drive an SUV and I think it actually looks really smart

01:30 as well. This dark blue colour looks great, you've got these piano black highlights down the front

01:34 there, big Subaru logo there as well, camera built into that whole grille section, a little bit of

01:40 chrome there as well and then these matte black finishes down the bottom so it still looks nice

01:45 and rugged without needing to look like an SUV. You get full LED headlights with headlight washers,

01:50 LED fog lights down the bottom and if we whip around to the side, you've got 18-inch alloy

01:56 wheels, the design is pretty straightforward, machined finish on the outside and then piano

02:01 black on the inside there. Big old wheel arch guards here, have a look at that and not uniform

02:05 in shape either, they sort of have this ridge up the top there. It is worth noting that front and

02:11 rear dampers and also front springs have been adjusted here for the turbo model in comparison

02:17 to the naturally aspirated ones, so it'll be interesting to see whether it rides as well as

02:20 the regular one does. Up the top here you have this sort of shadow chrome finish, a little bit

02:25 of chrome down the bottom there with an indicator built into the wing mirror, no camera or anything

02:29 under there. Down the bottom here you have that matte black finish. Up the top here the roof

02:33 rails are interesting because you can basically have them set up like this or flick them across

02:38 so that they're active, so pretty impressive setup there and they sort of live nice and high as well,

02:43 so even the roof rails look like they're off-road ready. You get privacy glass. Outback down the

02:48 bottom here, around the back you're going to find partial LED taillights, Outback with XT,

02:55 XT being the turbo designation and then Subaru symmetrical all-wheel drive. I mentioned before

03:02 the towing capacity has increased, I'll go into a bit more detail on that when we do go for a drive.

03:06 Down the bottom here you have a bit of matte black and then also grey as well and a shark fin

03:10 aerial up the top there, so let me know what you reckon about the Outback. Do you think this is a

03:15 great alternative to an SUV? Do you think it's a bit expensive now that they've turbocharged it?

03:20 Let me know what you reckon in the comments section below. Okay, so we are in the Outback.

03:23 We'll start off with the key, lock, unlock, boot and then you have nothing on the back there,

03:29 a little bit of chrome highlight on the side there or brushed chrome. You have a push button start

03:34 just here next to the driver's knee and also proximity sensing to get inside the cabin.

03:40 Yeah, look, I like this interior because it's pretty versatile, nicely presented as well,

03:45 big infotainment screen in the centre there that gives you all the control you need over the car's

03:50 functions and all these surfaces just feel really nice as well, so when you are spending this kind

03:55 of money, it actually feels like you're getting value for that investment as well. I don't love

04:00 the piano black, it's sort of all over the place here, but anyway, it is just a little bit hard to

04:06 keep clean, it scratches easily, they're just, you know, designers are obsessed with it for some

04:10 reason, so anyway. Now, what about your touch points? So in the centre here, that's really

04:15 nice and soft, soft on the door as well. How soft are they? We've got our durometer, we've tested

04:20 the main surfaces in this cabin. If you want to see how this car compares to others that we've

04:25 tested before, you can look at the link in the description below. Now, build quality,

04:29 tiny bit wonky there, but for the most part, it's actually not too bad and our door test,

04:35 it sounds solid. Let's check infotainment, so you have this 11.6 inch vertical display here in the

04:43 centre, it's a touchscreen, but it also has shortcut buttons on the side for things like

04:49 temperature controls, volume and tuning, which I think is definitely a good thing,

04:53 especially for those functions that you just want to access quickly, like volume,

04:56 you can either do steering wheel or just reach over here and away it goes. On the radio front,

05:01 you have AM, FM, DAB digital radio, that's all plumbed through a nine speaker Harman Kardon

05:07 branded sound system. It's a really good sound system, so it's good to see that it's standard

05:11 here in the top spec version. In addition to that, you have smartphone mirroring in the form of Apple

05:16 CarPlay and Android Auto. I'll show you what Apple CarPlay looks like to start with, so wireless,

05:20 not too bad, tiny, tiny bit laggy there, but for the most part, it's fine. Big display there as

05:27 well, so you can actually see exactly what's going on. This is what Android Auto looks like,

05:31 so that covers that entire screen there as well, so pretty good setup, quite like that.

05:36 Other functions in here, look, you do have some sort of car features for off-road driving,

05:41 so you can see tilt angles, also what the all-wheel drive system is doing as well,

05:45 so there are a few sort of nifty little features you have in there, along with inbuilt satellite

05:49 navigation as well. Ahead of the driver, you have a smaller four-ish inch display,

05:53 so that is basically your trip computer and other sort of basic functions like that.

05:57 Interesting feature here is this little thing, so this has some cameras built into it,

06:02 and it's designed that when you do get into the car, it can detect your face and then apply all

06:06 of your driver settings, so you can configure that and it'll recall all those settings for you.

06:11 Now let's talk safety technology, you have autonomous emergency braking through this

06:15 camera system that Subaru has running. It tends to work pretty well, also detects like if the car's

06:21 moved off ahead of you and it gives you a little bing if you aren't concentrating, hopefully not

06:26 on your phone. Auto-dimming rear vision mirror, you have blind spot monitoring built into the

06:30 wing mirror over there, you have radar cruise control with a lane departure warning. There is

06:34 a semi-autonomous steering function which we'll test when we go for a spin. You have rear cross

06:38 traffic alert. You do have a 360 camera as well, it's quite interesting, so I'll show you what that

06:44 looks like. I'll pop this into reverse first, so you can see it showing up there, you get guidelines,

06:49 you can also very clearly see our suitcase as well, then you can also press this button here

06:54 while you're driving, so that gives you vision out the front and also down the side on the passenger

06:58 side. Not the best vision in the world, you can't really sort of see what's going on there, but it

07:03 kind of does the job. And in addition to all of that, this is what your horn sounds like.

07:06 So let's talk about practicality and we'll start off with your connectivity.

07:12 Now the interesting thing here is that Subaru has gone a little bit wild with power outputs,

07:18 so there's a USB-C and a USB-A port up the front here. The USB-C port is three amps, which means

07:23 at five volts you'll get 15 watts of charging, which is pretty healthy. You have an auxiliary

07:28 outlet there as well. No wireless phone charging unfortunately, but you can whack your phone down

07:33 there if you want or just in the cup holder as well. You'd also have a 12-volt outlet that's

07:38 located in the glove box there. In terms of storing your odds and ends, coffee cup can go in here,

07:42 plenty of room in there for that as well. Bottle goes into there too. There are no teeth, so it

07:47 does move around a little bit, but there is a deeper bottle holder there if you do need it.

07:51 This fits inside the door as well. Try a larger bottle, see if that fits in there.

07:55 No, not quite unfortunately. Other storage, you have center console here with storage up the top

08:01 there and then storage down here as well. Have a look at this though, CD player. You don't see

08:06 those very often, so it's pretty cool to see that exist. You have a reasonably sized glove box down

08:12 here that's almost entirely consumed by that manual. Little storage nook just there and finally

08:17 a sunglasses holder up the top. Okay, let's talk comfort. So you have dual zone automatic climate

08:22 control up the front here. You have heated and cooled seats. You have a heated steering wheel.

08:26 On the seats, you have electric seat adjustments. You can go forwards, backwards, backrest can go

08:31 forwards, backwards. You have lumbar adjustment as well. You can lift the front and the back too.

08:36 The cool thing is here, so Nappa leather seats, lots of perforations too, so if you are driving

08:41 in the outback, in your outback, you're going to stay nice and cool. Steering offers both tilts

08:47 and reach adjustment and on your reach test, all of this stuff is easy to reach while you're

08:51 driving. Okay, second row of the outback. So knee room, excellent. Toe room is great. Headroom is

08:57 really good as well. Just shows you, you really don't need an SUV to get the space that you think

09:02 you need. It is a really, really well thought out space here. You get matte pockets. They're sort of

09:08 tiered as well. You have two 2.1 amp outlets here. Seat heaters for your two outboard seats.

09:16 Air vents there as well to keep you nice and cool. Center armrest here with two cup holders.

09:21 Holds the bottle in nicely. Rubber teeth there too. Bottle fits inside the door there as well.

09:28 And then our window test. So it's auto up and down. Huh, goes all the way down. Win-win.

09:34 And in addition to that, you have ISOFIX points on your two outboard seats with three top tether

09:40 points. Okay, let's talk cargo space. So you've got a powered tailgate. Crank that open. So in

09:47 here you actually have, it's a pretty clever storage area. So you have a stack of hooks off

09:51 to the side. They all drop down as well. You've got storage off to these outer edges. Well,

09:56 actually you don't have it on that side because there is a subwoofer, but you do have it

10:00 over here. Beneath the cargo floor, you'll find a full-size spare tyre, which is great.

10:04 Your kit for changing that. You've also got a 12-volt outlet over here as well.

10:10 In terms of space, you have a little over 500 litres available there. I'll show you what it

10:15 looks like with our bags in there. So there it is there. Really nice and generous space.

10:22 And then what you can do if you do want more space, you give these levers a pull over here.

10:27 That drops the second row out of the way, and that reveals a little under 1300 litres of cargo space.

10:34 [Car engine]

10:36 Okay, so we've just hit the road in the Outback Turbo. Now, powering this is a turbocharged

10:43 2.4-litre four-cylinder petrol engine. It makes 183 kilowatts of power and 350 newton metres of

10:50 torque. So it is up considerably on the naturally aspirated version of this car. So you do feel that

10:55 behind the wheel because when you do sink the slipper in, it sort of pins you nicely back in

11:00 the seat. It's not like diesel torque where it punches you, but it does feel considerably quicker

11:05 than the naturally aspirated version. It still remains mated to a continuously variable transmission,

11:11 and that means when you do lay into the throttle, you do find that it makes a fair bit of noise,

11:16 and then it sort of picks up pace a little bit as it goes. So I think it is a pretty good setup for

11:22 this particular engine. Subaru has kind of nailed that formula of a continuously variable transmission

11:27 with the turbocharged petrol engine. They do it really well in the new WRX, and I think they've

11:32 translated it nicely here as well. You'd also have paddle shifters here on the steering wheel if you

11:36 do want to manually control your gears, and this is handy for things like towing. If you're going

11:40 down a long descent, you're able to pull back through the gears and get a bit of engine braking

11:44 in. So it is a pretty versatile transmission is what I'm trying to say.

11:47 Subaru claims a combined fuel economy of nine litres per 100 ks, but we're currently sitting

11:56 on 11.6. That is pretty high I reckon, and I'm surprised by that. I knew it would use more fuel

12:03 than a standard Outback, but I wasn't expecting it to be using that much fuel, so that is a big

12:07 jump up there. So yeah, it is a little bit disappointing. Yes, you do get the extra sort

12:12 of punch behind the wheel, especially for towing, but do keep in mind that it is going to chew

12:16 through a fair bit of fuel. One of the big advantages here with Subaru's entire range,

12:22 with the exception of the BRZ, is the all-wheel drive system, and it just gives you that extra

12:26 surety and confidence behind the wheel. You know that when you lay into the throttle,

12:30 it's not going to understeer or oversteer or do anything silly. It is just very predictable

12:35 and easy to drive, and that's one thing that has always been a constant with Subaru, is they're

12:39 just pleasant to drive behind the wheel. There are never any real big surprises.

12:43 Steering feel is good. It has a bit of weight to it, so it is sort of heavy-ish, but it's not the

12:48 end of the world. It still means that parking in and around the city is pretty straightforward.

12:52 The ride, on the other hand, is fantastic. It just does such a good job in and around the city,

12:57 and out here on these country roads - and we're about to go to our very bad country road in a

13:01 second - but out on country roads, it actually does a great job of just keeping everything nice

13:05 and smooth. Now, our sine waves. Let's bump this up to 130 here for the sine waves and see how

13:11 this performs in terms of body control. Yeah, look, it's pretty bouncy through there,

13:18 but it is a controlled bounce. It's really interesting. We're driving the

13:22 Cherry Emoto 5 at the moment, and that is really softly sprung, and it just

13:27 doesn't feel like it has any body control. This is very sort of soft at that top end, but I feel

13:33 in charge of the vehicle. It doesn't feel like it's going to surprise me at any point. So,

13:37 yeah, look, it probably could do with a bit more body control at the top end, but for the rest of

13:42 it, it is a really nicely performing package. Okay, we've got our dodgy country road here,

13:48 so we'll hit this at 90 k's an hour. This really is a stress test for the suspension system.

13:53 So far, it's doing a commendable job. We've got our condensed sine wave coming up here.

13:58 This really just gives us an idea of how well that suspension copes with...

14:02 Oh, look at that. That is really good. I have full control of the car over the top there.

14:07 It doesn't float over it, which means the suspension has time to settle, and then on this

14:11 really choppy stuff here, everything is just remaining in check. There are no surprises.

14:16 It's nice and smooth. It's not overly firm. It's not overly soft. It's just great. So it means that

14:21 if you do have the family in here and you are on a corrugated section of country road, this is tuned

14:26 to handle those conditions nicely. Now, drive modes. You do have a couple to choose from.

14:33 I mentioned before you can do your manual gear selections here on the gear stick and the steering

14:37 wheel, but you have I and S. When you hit S, it engages sport modes. Let's go for a little

14:42 fang around our track here and see what this feels like. I know this isn't a sports car,

14:47 but we drive every car around our track, so we can get a bit of a vibe for how it goes.

14:52 I can feel the all-wheel drive system shuffling torque to the rear there.

15:01 It's actually really nicely done here, and it is very predictable.

15:05 Everything is happening nice and smoothly.

15:09 Yeah, it actually has quite a nice strong mid-range. The brakes are good as well,

15:15 and there's not a huge amount of body roll, so when you do tip it into some of these corners here,

15:20 it's holding on really nicely. We've got tram tracks coming up here.

15:24 See what the braking's like over those. It's great. We've got our higher speed section along

15:28 the back here. It's actually surprisingly pretty good. You can pick up a fair bit of

15:37 pace here, and that's one of the advantages of it not having the sort of proportions of an SUV.

15:42 It means you can sort of lay into it. Look, it is actually picking up speed nicely up along

15:47 the back here, nudging 150, 160 there, and then 170. That's actually pretty good. I'm

15:54 surprised by how well this handles. Now, I was really surprised actually at the road noise as

16:02 well. There really isn't a great deal coming into the cabin on smoother surfaces. When it is coarse

16:06 chip, it is a little bit louder, but still not the end of the world. It is a pretty quiet place

16:10 to be seated, and big shout out to a car expert, Rita, who got in touch with us and has sent us

16:16 out this amazing calibrated sound meter for all of our future tests, so thank you for that.

16:22 Okay, time to test our lane support system. So I'm going to get the speed up to 70 k's an hour,

16:27 and then we will activate cruise control here. There it is at 70. So what the aim is here is

16:34 to test in our three outer lanes to see how well the self-steering function works,

16:39 because that gives us an indication of what it's like out on the roads in the public,

16:44 and as the banking gets progressively steeper, that's basically an indication to the car of how

16:49 much torque it's willing to apply to the steering wheel, and it simulates going around a corner or

16:53 something like that on a normal road. So I'm going to hit this button here to activate that,

16:57 and see the little thing goes green up the top there. So in the first lane here,

17:01 it is working nicely. We're very centred in the lane there. I'm only just holding the steering

17:07 wheel here. If you're driving out on sort of public roads, you'll actually have to hold it

17:11 properly. Jump over to the next lane, we'll see how it performs here with a slightly bigger banking.

17:17 Wait for that to activate. There we go, it's detected the lanes. I'm just going to let go

17:23 of the steering wheel. It's doing a pretty good job. It's keeping us nice and central there to

17:28 the lane, which is good. So it's a pass in lane one and two. Let's give lane three a crack here.

17:33 This is where most of the cars fail, but you never know. Let's see what happens.

17:36 Okay, it's not getting there. It's not detecting the lines. We'll just give it a little bit more

17:48 time here. A bit closer to that line. It's not detecting the lines at all here.

17:52 Closer to the top. Now it's not even letting us get in there. I think it's because I have too

18:01 much torque here applied to the steering wheel for it. So there it is, it's coming through. Okay,

18:06 so that's activated now. I'll just let go of the steering wheel.

18:16 Yeah, look, it's okay. It is straddling that line a fair bit, but no, look, it's okay. It is

18:22 really riding that line and I think if I was out on like a public road, I'd probably be

18:27 forcing it to come back in because if you're next to a truck or something,

18:30 that's going to be the best place to be seated. So yeah, look, it's a pass in lane

18:34 one, two and three. It's just performance could be a little bit better there on that

18:38 banked section of the oval.

18:42 Okay, let's do some performance testing. So we don't have an official 0-100 time, but

18:47 today we'll test 0-100 and 80-120 as well to see what our overtaking performance is like.

18:52 I've left it in sport mode. I'll just dial up some revs and stand on the throttle.

18:56 All right, fairly leisurely off the line there with the CVT, but once it

19:03 hooks up, it keeps moving nicely. There's 100 and 120. All righty, let's have a look at how we went

19:11 there. Come to a stop. Yeah, once it actually sort of starts moving, it really sort of has a fair

19:16 bit of punch in the back there, which is nice. So 0-100, 7.2 seconds, which is pretty good.

19:22 80-120, 4.25 seconds. That's a great number. That is your overtaking speed. It just tells you

19:29 that it really has that decent mid-range to get everything nice and moving along. So

19:35 let's do a braking test from 100 and see how quickly this pulls up.

19:39 Okay, let's do a brake from 100. I'll just jack the speed up here. We'll hit our marker

19:43 and jump on the anchors. That's 100 there.

19:49 Oh, I feel really nice and strong. Okay, let's see if it matches the actual numbers.

19:57 So 100-0, 3 seconds in 40.37 metres. Not a bad effort for a car that weighs this much,

20:04 so pretty impressed with that. If you do want to see how the Outback compares to other cars

20:08 that we've tested before in terms of acceleration and braking, have a look at the link in the

20:11 description below where you can run those numbers against each other. Let's have a little look at

20:16 our reverse speed test. How quickly does the Outback get to its terminal velocity in reverse?

20:22 Here we go. Oh, there you go. 40 kilometres an hour, 45.

20:37 So the Subaru Outback XT, they have finally done what I needed, which is a little bit more oomph

20:42 behind the wheel, and it is all the more better for it. It's so much fun to drive and just far

20:47 more engaging, and if you are towing, this is going to be the best choice for you because you

20:52 are getting that turbocharger to add that extra kick. The downside, though, is that it seems to

20:56 be pretty thirsty on fuel. I want to spend a bit more time behind the wheel in the city to see if

21:01 it gets any better, but the way that it is now, it is going to chew through a fair bit of fuel,

21:05 which is worth keeping an eye out for. So let me know what you reckon about the Outback in the

21:09 comments section below. Do you think this is the type of vehicle to get instead of an SUV?

21:14 I'm keen for your feedback. Let me know what you think. If you did enjoy this video,

21:17 please make sure you like it and you share it with your mates, and if you haven't done so already,

21:21 subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon. But until next time, take it easy.

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