Subaru Outback SUVOTY Review: No, It’s Not a Looker, but Who Cares?
The Outback loses some style points but delivers space, value, and one of Subaru’s best interiors yet.
Pros
- Spacious and great-looking interior
- Solid overall value
- Impressive infotainment system
Cons
- Unfortunate styling
- The incessant beeping
- Driver assists need work
Subaru showed up to our 2027 SUV of the Year soirée with not one, not two, but three brand-new Subaru Outback models for judges to evaluate. The Outback is no stranger to the SUV of the Year trophy, having won the award back in 2010. But that fourth-generation lifted wagon was built a long time ago; what has the Outback done for Subaru lately? Big sales for one. Subaru has consistently moved more than 100,000 Outbacks annually in the U.S., with 2017 being the Outback’s biggest year at 188,886 units sold.
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Sadly, for Subaru, advancement in design will always be one of our six key criteria, and the new Outback has very little going for it on that front. “If the Subaru Outback wins SUVOTY, it won’t be on the strength of its styling,” features editor Christian Seabaugh said. Harsh but fair—and more important, he’s right.
We know Subaru made the decision to restyle the Outback away from its jacked-up station wagon roots in favor of a bigger and tougher SUV style. But it’s simply not a looker. “Thank goodness this isn’t a beauty contest,” features editor Scott Evans said. “I don’t even think it looks rugged.” Then there’s the extroverted Wilderness model, which yes, is very ugly, but it’s also impossibly bizarre looking, too. With copper accents!
But once you open the door, the opposite is true. Great design advances abound, especially with its confusingly named base Premium trim. “I’m most impressed with the base model’s interior,” Seabaugh said. “The cloth does much to ritz up the dash, and both the instrument cluster and infotainment design are nice considering the price.”
We were also taken with the much improved infotainment setup on the pricier models we evaluated, the Touring XT and the Wilderness. Quite unexpected. “I keep shaking my head to wake up from this dream where Subaru has up-to-date tech that’s executed better than many rivals,” buyer’s guide director Zach Gale said.
The difference between the Premium and the Touring/Wilderness is primarily the engine. The base Outback gets a 2.5-liter naturally aspirated boxer-four good for 180 horsepower (2 hp less than before) and 178 lb-ft of torque (2 lb-ft more than before), whereas the pricier models get a 2.4-liter turbo boxer-four that cranks out 260 hp and 277 lb-ft. Judges enjoyed both engines for the most part, with the majority commenting that the base model’s mill was good enough. No one even really minded the CVT—the only transmission available—all that much.
There was one additional negative, however: its constant beeping. “I couldn’t in good conscience recommend this car to a close friend based on the annoyance level of its safety systems and the inferiority of its lane centering and hands-free systems,” technical director Frank Markus said.
Although this affects the Touring XT far greater than it does the Premium, both beep and flash way too much. “Few things kill my customer satisfaction faster than pausing my music, flashing big red signs on the main entertainment screen, and hectoring me to put my hands on the wheel when they never left the wheel,” Markus said. “Subaru has a long way to go to make its safety equipment palatable to reasonable humans.” A salient point. It’s supposed to be driver assistance, not driver annoyance.
All that said, the spacious Outback Premium for less than $40K is a solid value, something Subaru’s been good at offering for a long time—styling and beeping be damned.
