I know long term reviews have been done of new model cars. Consumer Reports does at most 3-6 years for their long term reliability tests. But has anyone ever done a lifetime road test? Think about it, we all have. Remember the car your family had as a child, the one that lasted the longest. Did you receive that car when you first got your driver's license, or when you moved away from home? If so, you're currently conducting a lifetime review of that vehicle, as well as a review of your relationship with it.
For example, I remember going on a test drive with my parents at Carter Subaru of Seattle back in the year 2000, and the saleswoman had my dad drive an Outback to an empty school parking lot (it was summer), and telling him to whip it around as fast as possible and then brake to as she put it, "Really feel how good the new ABS is." Meanwhile I was strapped down in the back, my ten year old body being thrown forward and then pressed firmly back into the luxury that was 00s era leather folding rear seats.
My father then drove that 2000 Outback Limited into downtown Seattle for work, and hour there and an hour back every day. He never once complained about it. (Before I go any further I'll just mention that yes, it was also a manual, perhaps the last top trim level manual transmission car that Subaru ever made, excluding the STi. So yes, this is indeed a car journalists' fantasy). Moving forward some years that Subaru took my entire family and all the baggage that entails (emotional and physical) to Yellowstone and back. The classic American Road Trip. Never once did it overheat or complain about driving all day every day through the dusty straights of Idaho and Wyoming. Or the multiple mountain passes thrown at it during ski season.
It had the cold weather package. At that time that included heated mirror, a heated windscreen for the wiper blades, and a heated rear window and seats. As an inquisitive boy I once asked where the antenna for the radio was, because I had only known our Jeep Grand Wagoneer to have a massive extendable aerial like any fine American product. The aerial, as my dad explained it, was wired into the back left hatch window, which until then I had only thought of as a strange geometric design, which I thought rather asymmetrical on any vehicle. That's an innovation that you don't see on cars even now due to cost saving.
Subaru has always been a forward thinking company, but also a very conservative one. What I mean is that early on, they had crazy ideas like the Brat, solely made to get past the light truck ban. The Alcyone or XT which was the exuberant Japanese expression of the 80s wedge car, with a cockpit like a fighter jet with strangely placed controls and a joystick gear lever with 'On Demand' 4 wheel drive. The SVX which followed, was the natural progression of the future-obsessed Subaru, and it nearly ended them in North America.
What Subaru did was innovate their way into a very conservative, niche market that is all their own, because when the Legacy and Legacy Outback were born, they had already put in motion the same things they do today. "We're going to put a H4 boxer engine in every model, and they're all going to have independent suspension, and all wheel drive, because that's what the perfect car has." Subaru basically pulled a, "We're going to have our own car company, with hookers, and blackjack," but instead settled for very sensible engine choices and 5 seat wagons.
While Honda and Toyota kept trying to out do each other on who could make the more boring front wheel drive car in the 00s, Subaru kept with their conservative strategy, "No, no, no, wouldn't want to rock the boat now, people might think we're not reliable anymore." "What AWD isn't very fuel efficient? No matter, we'll say its now a 'partial zero emissions vehicle' and that its made of love." This practicality and minor deviations from a set of elements that they've used for the past 20 years is what has made them so successful.
It's really quite strange, given how much other car companies change their lineup and make 'refreshes' to current models, that Subaru has lived on this long by essentially only changing the look of most of their offerings. The only deviation in recent memory has been the BRZ, which wasn't even their idea, it was Toyota. "Yep that crazy Toyota wants to make another two seater sports car again! But get this, they want to use our engine. Should we agree to it?" "Yes but on the condition we make our own sports car, that's exactly the same as theirs, don't deviate from the plan." If you think about the rest of their current lineup of vehicles, the Legacy is the same sedan as it ever was, the Outback is the same with more toys, the Forester is a slightly larger Outback, the Impreza was the small Outback but it became the hot hatch WRX and STi,("Because we should have one of those."), and now the XV Crosstrek is the small Outback and their timid foray into the world of hybrids, some 15 years after they were all the rage.
My Point is that somehow this stolid soldiering on, without much care for the current vehicular trends appeals to consumers and enthusiasts alike. People like being able to with model years of the same Outback or WRX without much drama, they'll always know exactly how the car will behave, and what to expect with a vehicle that will never cost over $40k.
But I digress, my current car is the same 2000 Subaru Outback Limited that my parents bought those 15 years ago new from the dealer, and it has never let anyone down. When the greater Seattle area got continual snow one winter for most of December, my dad still went to work like a normal person. Whereas I watch fools try to pull out of my neighborhood and spin out, panicking that they wouldn't be able to make it to work. Throughout all that time my parents kept the Outback, it remained pristine, if you had looked at it, inside and out, a couple years ago you would have thought it was less than a year old. Hell it had the same battery for 7 years and was no worse the wear.
I received this fine automobile, title and all in the summer of 2013. As a child I only thought of it as a conveyance, something to get me to point A to point B. My high school car, a 2004 Volkswagen Jetta 1.8T had a soul, it had a character, because it was my first car, and bundled with it were all my fond, and not so fond memories of high school. The Subaru to me gained my respect when I learned to drive manual in it. I burned out the clutch but I still became proficient nonetheless. So in 2013 when I actually received the car, it took on something else, something special.
All its life it had never really been driven hard, or used to the limit of its ability, and I respected that, but I also knew that I would never use it the same way my Dad had. Sure I commuted every day to work with it. But I also drove like a maniac on rough Arizona dirt roads, did power slides in the snows of Flagstaff, and braved the dunes of Lake Powell in a sand storm with it. I learned for the first time what a cars true potential can be when you stop treating it like a machine, and start learning that like a person, you can take risks with a car, and end up learning way more about it, and yourself, than you ever thought possible.
This is what I mean when I talk about the lifetime road test. You grow up with a car, or cars, some die off, and some survive to become your own. As you grow as a person, you appreciate different things about that car. For me, it was the progression of appreciating how big the back seat was and that my sister and I each got our own cup holders, to say appreciating how good it feels to take it down a dirt road somewhere and swing the back end out on the way to a hike or camp out. If you're someone with a 'boring' car, I make this appeal to you. You can find the excitement in your car, I know its possible, because mine is the most grocery-getting, dog-having, Portland lesbian cyclist owning, hilariously under-powered car out there, and I sure as hell found it.
I currently have 172,823 miles on my Outback, here's to 200,000 more.
