When someone hands you the keys to a Subaru Outback Wilderness, points you towards the Australian outback and says, essentially, “Follow the rally cars,” you know it’s going to be a good day
We were in Mildura, somewhere in that great Australian triangle between South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria, to experience the 2026 Sunraysia Safari Rally with Subaru. And when I say “experience”, I mean we were given the opportunity to drive two stages of one of Australia’s toughest off-road endurance events in an Outback Wilderness.
We were behind the competitors and behind the sweeper car, but frankly, going considerably faster than anything that has a supermarket car park on its regular itinerary probably should. The result? Dust, noise, speed, huge grins. And, ultimately, a Subaru one-two at the finish.
Welcome to the Sunraysia Safari
The Sunraysia Safari isn’t your average rally. While the modern event commenced in 2017, its roots can be traced back to 1971, giving it a considerable history in Australian off-road competition. Today, it brings together cars, motorcycles, quads and two-up motorcycle crews for a seriously demanding test of speed, navigation, endurance and mechanical resilience.
And endurance really is the operative word. This isn’t a case of blasting through a few kilometres of gravel before heading back to the service area for a latte. The 2026 event stretches across four days, nine stages and more than 1,000 kilometres of competition through the Australian outback.
The landscape throws pretty much everything it can at the competitors: fast open tracks, sandy sections, bulldust, ruts, technical navigation, long grass and plenty of places where a small mistake can become a very large problem. It’s also what makes the event so fascinating.
What’s more, this is a blind endurance rally. The drivers aren’t simply memorising a circuit and repeating it lap after lap. They’re having to read the road, interpret the course and commit at speed, often with little more than the information provided by their navigation notes.
That’s a very different proposition from going around a closed race track. And it makes what the competitors were doing even more impressive.
Chasing the rally
Subaru had two entries competing in the 2026 Sunraysia Safari through Maximum Motorsport. One was a Subaru WRX driven by Australian off-road legend Toby Price, alongside co-driver Ben Searcy. The other was a Subaru Crosstrek driven by Dean Herridge and co-driver Sam Hill.
Herridge wasn’t exactly turning up for a social drive. The 2025 Sunraysia Safari winner knows this event exceptionally well, while Price brings an almost ridiculous CV to the equation, including victories at Dakar and the Finke Desert Race.
So where did that leave us? Well, somewhere behind them. Actually, quite a few places behind them. We were running behind the sweeper car, meaning the competitors had already been through, the sweeper had checked the stage, and then we were allowed onto the course.
But don’t confuse “behind the rally cars” with “pootling along”. Far from it. Our convoy was moving. Very quickly.
The Outback Wilderness gets a new job
The vehicle Subaru gave us was the Outback Wilderness. Now, normally, an Outback Wilderness is likely to spend its life doing very sensible things, (School runs, Shopping, Camping trips and maybe heading somewhere slightly more adventurous at the weekend), what it probably isn’t designed for is chasing a field of rally competitors through the Australian bush.
Except, as it turns out, it is rather good at it. The Wilderness comes with 240mm of ground clearance, which immediately proved useful as the track became rougher, sandier and generally more enthusiastic about trying to rearrange the underside of our vehicle. We also had all-terrain tyres fitted, giving us an extra layer of confidence and grip compared with the standard road-going setup.
But the real hero of the day? The adaptive dampers, they were phenomenal. The surface beneath us was constantly changing. One moment it was relatively smooth and fast, the next it was corrugated, rutted, loose or covered in bulldust. Yet the suspension just seemed to absorb whatever the Australian outback decided to throw at it. There was no great drama, no constant crashing through the suspension, just the Outback getting on with it.
This isn’t supposed to be this much fun
One of the strangest things about driving a rally stage in a vehicle like this is the disconnect between what you’re doing and what you’re actually sitting in. You’re surrounded by a comfortable, practical Subaru Outback. There’s space, there’s technology and there’s a relatively civilised cabin. And yet outside, there are trees, dust, rocks, mud, puddles and a track disappearing into the wilderness (pardon the pun). And we were peddling along at what can only be described as ‘not supermarket speeds‘.
The traction control was switched off, the driver attention monitor was disabled and the Outback was effectively given permission to get on with the job. And it loved it. The power delivery was particularly impressive. There’s enough punch under your right foot to make the Outback feel genuinely eager, and on a loose surface that power, combined with Subaru’s symmetrical all-wheel-drive system, gives you a remarkable amount of confidence.
You point it at the track, squeeze the throttle and it simply goes. Hard, fast and with a ridiculous amount of stability. Then comes the dust. Lots of dust.
Dust changes everything
Following a rally isn’t just about driving quickly. It’s about concentration. When you’re behind another vehicle on a dusty Australian track, visibility can disappear remarkably quickly. A wall of dust rolls across the track and suddenly you’re not looking at a road so much as trying to work out where the road might be.
This is where the Outback’s confidence really matters. You have to trust the vehicle. You have to trust the symmetrical all-wheel-drive system. And, most importantly, you have to trust yourself.
The course had been affected by rain, leaving a mixture of surfaces and conditions. There was bulldust, loose material, rough sections and even the occasional puddle waiting to add a little extra entertainment. And while we were conscious that this was a press vehicle and not a rally car, it was difficult not to get caught up in the moment. The temptation was always there to push a little harder.
Then a corner appeared, then another, then another. And suddenly you’re laughing inside your non-existent helmet, or, in my case, laughing while wondering whether Subaru was going to ask for the keys back at the end of the day. Because there was one small problem, these cars weren’t exactly going to come back looking showroom fresh.
273 kilometres of Australian wilderness
Across our experience, we covered around 273km of rugged Australian landscape. That’s a lot of time to discover just how capable the Outback Wilderness can be when the tarmac disappears. And what struck me most was how easy the car made it feel.
It’s not about brute force and it’s not some enormous lifted monster with a winch bolted to the front. It’s an Outback. A Subaru designed to be usable every day. Yet here it was being thrown into an environment where dedicated competition machinery was doing battle, and it was coping remarkably well.
The combination of ground clearance, suspension, all-wheel drive and those all-terrain tyres gave it the ability to absorb the terrain rather than fight it. There was one point where I even joked about the brakes. “Who cares about brakes?” Perhaps not the most reassuring thing to say while hurtling along an Australian rally stage, but that’s the sort of environment the Sunraysia Safari creates. Your sense of perspective changes rather quickly.
And then there were the real heroes
As much fun as our two stages were, what we were doing was only a tiny taste of what the competitors faced. We could drive away at the end of the day. They had four days. Nine stages. More than 1,000 kilometres. And the pressure of competition.
For Toby Price and Ben Searcy, that pressure ultimately produced victory. The Subaru WRX crossed the finish line with a total time of 10 hours, 58 minutes and 36 seconds, securing outright victory for Maximum Motorsport.
And it wasn’t just a win. It was a Subaru one-two. Dean Herridge and Sam Hill brought their Subaru Crosstrek home in second, just 1 minute and 32 seconds behind their teammates. The gap back to third was substantial, underlining just how strong the Subaru package and the Maximum Motorsport preparation had been.
For Herridge, it was another outstanding result at an event he won in 2025. For Price, it was another chapter in an already extraordinary off-road career. And for Subaru? Well, this was about as good as it gets.
One-two for Subaru — and we helped make it three
There is, however, another way of looking at the result. Toby and Dean took first and second. But there were also a bunch of journalists bouncing around the course in Outback Wildernesses, doing their best to keep up, chasing the dust and generally finding out just how far a supposedly everyday SUV could be pushed.
We weren’t competing for stage times. We weren’t trying to beat Toby (quite frankly, that would have been an extremely short and embarrassing contest). But we were part of the Subaru experience, and the Outback Wilderness proved itself in exactly the environment where a vehicle’s engineering has nowhere to hide.
The rally cars went faster. Obviously. But the Outback Wilderness demonstrated that you don’t necessarily need a competition car to have an enormous amount of fun when the road runs out. And that’s perhaps the biggest takeaway from the Sunraysia Safari. Subaru didn’t just win the rally. It showed the breadth of its capability.
A WRX took outright victory. A Crosstrek took second. And an Outback Wilderness carried us through hundreds of kilometres of rugged Australian terrain with a grin-inducing level of competence. So technically, Subaru finished first and second. But if you include us? Subaru was the ultimate winner.
And after two stages of the Sunraysia Safari, 273km of outback wilderness and considerably more dust than I care to admit, I’m already wondering when I can do it again.
