Tell me they haven’t changed the Subaru Blue, I thought, as the Subaru Crosstrek rolled off the truck. It looks lighter. More lagoon blue than Horizon Blue. It’s the kind of blue you like to see in your holiday photos as a backdrop to a goofily smiling you holding a drink with fruit sticking out of it. That’s the blue of this particular Subaru Crosstrek – my short term pal that would take me down the Hume to Victoria’s Alpine region for an all new Great Australian Detour. And, no, that colour is not a replacement for Subaru’s Horizon Blue, simply another option, or possibly a re-imagining on a car that has been fully reimagined.
The Subaru Crosstrek is a newer, sharper, redefined version of the wildly popular Subaru XV albeit wearing a different nameplate. At first glance it looks similar, but then, the harder you look, the more different it becomes. Weirdly, once inside you get the feeling things have changed but it’s kind of hard to work out how.
Or what.
As you’d expect with any new model, there are things that change and things that don’t need to because some babies are worth keeping despite the bathwater. (How’s that for a complete mongreling of an old fashioned saying!) So, you get what you’d expect – Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive, X-Mode for mud and snow and all that mess I’m hoping to encounter at Hotham. And of course, you get EyeSight® Driver Assist, the Driver Monitoring System*Driver Monitoring System performance and capability dependent on environmental and technical conditions. Refer to Owner's Manual for full details., Vision Assist and you also get the brand new 360 Degree View Monitor.
The other changes are more subtle – more of a feeling than a big physical change. And that’s intentional, because the engineers at Subaru sought help from medical experts to help understand the body to create a human-centred design. The feeling was something like, if we can make things more intuitive, wouldn’t that be a better driving experience? And frankly, I think they’ve got it right.
I’m an Apple user, so Apple CarPlay® works for me, but I know Android Auto™*Compatible Apple® or Android™ device required. is there for those other people yet to see the light. There’s USB A and C connections, but also a wireless phone charger for anyone looking to nonchalantly toss their phone into the space below the 11.6" touchscreen as if they didn’t have a care in the world. This could possibly be one of my children, for instance. They don't need to know how their phones charge, just that they do. You follow? And then there’s the hands-on control on the steering wheel, the Harman Kardon®*Harman Kardon® is a registered trademark of HARMAN International Industries, Incorporated. sound system, the different drive types and on it goes. It’s all nearby, all carefully put in place through hours of research, so it feels right.
It’s all about the feel, right? Isn’t that Subaru?
It’s feelings. And the one feeling I didn’t have on the drive to the snow was an ache in the back end.
So, the feelings from the Subaru Crosstrek are pretty good.
Andrew Daddo
Subaru Ambassador
Paid Partnership
