Subaru’s answer to a spicier Outback trades some polish for personality, and mostly gets away with it.
There’s a particular kind of car owner in my life who, when asked what they drive, answers with something like “oh, just the Outback”, as if apologising for owning one of the most sensible vehicles a Kiwi household can buy. I’ve got a few of these in my running group, and every single one of them will, unprompted, tell you how many hundreds of thousands of kilometres their old one did before it finally gave up. It’s a car bought once and then simply lived with, generation after generation, without much drama. We’ve had a go at the new gen of the Outback before, but I was open to having it a second time, even if just to have my fellow runner friends experience it another weekend.
And, once again, I had the Wilderness, the range topper. Under the skin sits the familiar 2.4-litre turbocharged boxer four, sending somewhere around 183kW and 350Nm through Subaru’s Lineartronic CVT and, of course, standard all-wheel drive. The Wilderness trim adds a new, more aggressive X-Mode setting for off-road duty, extra underbody hardware, and a general sense that Subaru wanted this one to look like it meant business.
From the design perspective, this is the most visually interesting Outback I’ve come across. Subaru has clearly decided the lineup needed a bit more personality, and it shows through a broader spread of colour options and, in the Wilderness’ case, gold accents dotted across the badging, the roof rails and the underbody cladding. It gives the whole car a slightly rugged, adventure-ready look, albeit I’m sure some people will think it is too much (although, genuinely, I’m still to chat to a single person that didn’t like it, Outback-aficionado or otherwise). Paired with the extra ride height and the more purposeful wheel and tyre package, it starts to properly blur the line between station wagon and SUV and, again, I was afraid this could scare away Outback owners (the “I refuse to drive an SUV” crowd), but even Subaru themselves are confident this is not happening. It doesn’t look too try-hard, it looks like a wagon that’s genuinely been given a reason to leave the tarmac.
Climb inside and it’s immediately obvious this is an Outback that’s been sorted rather than reinvented, and that’s a compliment: everything people already liked about this car has been improved, and what clearly didn’t work, has been extirped. There’s more space throughout, the practicality is excellent, and it’s a cabin where you sit down and immediately know where everything lives, from the jump. At 189cm I never had to think twice about headroom or seat travel, and getting comfortable behind the wheel took all of about ten seconds.
Storage is generous and well thought through, which matters in a car pitched at people who load it up for weekend trips rather than city commutes alone. But the best change in here is one Subaru deserves real credit for: the touchscreen mess that’s plagued their recent interiors has been properly cleaned up. Most of the functions that used to be buried two or three menus deep on that vertical tablet are now back to being physical buttons, and the infotainment screen itself has been simplified rather than stuffed with options, and it’s much more responsive. It’s a small thing to describe but a big thing to live with, and it’s the difference between fumbling for the climate control at a red light and just doing it without looking.
The second row is roomy enough for adults on a longer haul, and the boot carries on the Outback’s reputation as one of the more usefully shaped load bays in the segment, not the biggest number on paper, necessarily, but a genuinely practical, square space that swallows gear without complaint. If there’s a letdown in the tech department, it’s the omission of a 360-degree camera, which feels like a strange thing to leave out given how eager and well resolved the rest of the driver-assist and emergency systems are. On a car this size, with this much confidence baked into everything else it does for you, that one gap stands out more than it probably should.
Under the bonnet, that turbo boxer is still a car of two halves. It’s fast enough and responsive enough that you never feel short changed for power, and just like the WRX, is faster than it feels, but refinement remains a step behind where the rest of the industry has landed. There’s a shudder to it under load that boxer fans will tell you is “character” and everyone else will just call a rough edge. The CVT, meanwhile, is the same unit Subaru uses across much of the range, and in this application it makes the Outback Wilderness genuinely lovely around town: smooth, predictable, easy to place in traffic. The trade-off comes on throttle lift-off, where there’s a noticeable jerkiness that chips away at how connected the whole experience feels. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it does mean the CVT can feel like a rubber band more often than you’d like, stretching and snapping back rather than just doing what you asked of it, sometimes.
In city driving, the Outback Wilderness is mostly at home. The ride is comfortable, the visibility is good, and that CVT smoothness makes stop-start traffic a genuinely relaxed affair, jerkiness on lift-off aside. On the open road it settles into a confident, planted cruiser, with the AWD system giving you real reassurance and even trying to build some engagement that, for me personally, falls flat in the face of the CVT. The moment the seal runs out, however, the Wilderness keeps shining: there is great ground clearance, the suspension keeps everything under control, and the predictability of Subaru’s X-Modes just makes it much more enjoyable on mixed terrain than most front-wheel-drive-based SUVs out there.
Efficiency was never the boxer engine’s strong suit, and on a bigger, turbocharged, all-wheel-drive wagon like this one, the figures I saw over the week weren’t going to trouble any hybrid competitor. Subaru clearly isn’t selling this one on frugality (there’s the Forester for that) and it’s not pretending to.
So where does that leave the Outback Wilderness? It’s Subaru doubling down on exactly what’s kept people loyal to this nameplate for decades: space, practicality, all-weather confidence, and then adding a genuine dose of style and hardware on top, gold accents and all. The CVT jerkiness, the engine’s lack of polish, and some technology choices are real, specific criticisms, but none of them undo what is otherwise a very likeable, very capable wagon-that-thinks-it’s-an-SUV (or is it the other way?). If you’re wearing a Patagonia fleece and getting ready to go up Cardrona, or if you’re one of my running group friends quietly loyal to this badge, this new version gives you more reason than ever to keep the six stars on your driveway. Thanks, Subaru, for the opportunity, and thank you for reading this far!
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