Subaru XVCrosstrek review 2021 For when an Outback is too big, but a hatch is to
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00:00G'day, I'm Paul. So, we know that Subaru loves taking standard cars and then jacking them up a
00:04little bit. We've seen it with the Outback and we're a fan of the Outback. I think it's a really
00:08nice all-rounder. Well, they've also got this. It's called the Subaru XV. This is based on the
00:13Impreza, but it sits a little bit higher in standard Subaru form. This one right here in
00:18Australia is called the 2.0 IS. This is the top specification before you get into the hybrids.
00:24This is priced at just over $37,000. If that's a little bit too much, you can get into an XV at
00:29the base from a little under $30,000. This competes with things like the Hyundai Kona,
00:33the Toyota C-HR, and the Mazda CX-3. Today, we're going to do a detailed review to see if it's any
00:40good. If you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review, you can use those time codes up
00:43on the screen there. Or if you're on YouTube, just scroll down and you'll see the chapters below. And
00:47if you haven't done so already, make sure you hit subscribe and press the bell icon. That way,
00:51you can find out every single time we drive a yellow or whatever colored car that is.
00:57Okay, let's talk design. So you've got nine exterior colors to pick from and they're all free,
01:01which is great. Let me know, do you guys find that information useful? How many colors there are?
01:05We'll use your feedback to decide whether we include it in future videos or not. Now, in terms
01:10of the design of this, I have a bit of a soft spot for these because they buck the trend of SUVs.
01:15And it means that you can have something the size of a hatchback to drive in and around the city,
01:19but also something that's versatile enough to use off-road because this is permanent
01:23all-wheel drive as well. And yes, it's not going to climb Mount Everest,
01:26but you can do a bit of light off-roading if you go camping and stuff like that.
01:29Now, let's have a look at some of the design highlights. So this is obviously
01:32quite an outrageous color. Let me know what color you think it is because here in person,
01:37it looks yellow, but it's also got like a deep green tinge to it as well. So let me know what
01:43you think. Now, in terms of the design, you've got this grille down the front here that has a
01:47matte finish on it. They haven't gone to town with chrome here. And I think that's a good thing
01:51because it really gives this kind of that rugged look as opposed to being that luxury look. But on
01:57the same token, it still looks nice and classy as well. Same trend continues down the bottom
02:02here where they've got that brushed plastic feature. Over here with the headlights, you have
02:06full LED headlights with LED daytime running lights. You've got headlight washers. These are
02:10becoming a little rarer on cars these days. And then a fog light down the bottom there.
02:14If we whip around to the side here, you've got 18-inch alloy wheels on a highway terrain tire.
02:20I really like this design. So have a look at how they've integrated what looks like an R into the
02:26top there. And that's got that chrome finish on it. And then it's black on the inside. So it really
02:30makes the car stand out nicely. Similar to the Outback, they've got these wheel arch cladding
02:36things that basically aren't uniform. So they start small there and then they get wider as
02:41they go and then sort of chisel in around the back. A lot of you said that you weren't really
02:45a big fan of those on the Outback. Do you also dislike the treatment here? I'm keen to see what
02:51you think. Now if we move around to the side of the car, you can see that black highlight continues
02:56under that wing mirror there and that cladding continues down the side of the car. On the Outback,
03:01you actually have Outback written here but on the XV, they don't really have anything on there.
03:05You've got these roof rails that sit nicely on top of the car and this top spec also comes with a
03:10sunroof, privacy glass, more wheel arch cladding. Now if you come around to the rear, you'll see a
03:16spoiler up on the top there. You've got these nice looking taillights, XV badges, more of that black
03:22cladding with a reflector lamp in there. And then instead of going with a black diffuser, they've
03:27kind of integrated a diffuser style material here that matches the car's body colour. So I like the
03:34XV. Let me know what you think. Do you think it's over styled? Would you rather just get an SUV?
03:39I want to know what your thoughts are. Okay, we're inside the Subaru XV and here is the key. You have
03:46lock, unlock, boot. The unlock is the Subaru badge there. Nothing on the back and then you have like
03:52a brushed aluminium section on the side. It's a proximity sensing key so leave that in your pocket
03:57and you have a push button start over on this side. Now what about the styling? I think it's
04:01nicely presented. All of this stuff is rubber. It's got these sort of stitched inlays. It actually
04:07looks pretty nice. So this is at the higher end of the price tag for hatchbacks or SUV style
04:14hatchbacks so you know I think it does actually need to look pretty cool and I think they've
04:18ticked that box. This all looks a little bit complicated with all the screens here but I
04:23suspect they'll end up going down the path of what they've done in the new Outback where you get that
04:27big sort of portrait screen. Not loving all the piano black. It's here, here, along here, around there
04:34and as you know piano black marks pretty easily and is a little bit difficult to keep clean at
04:39times. Now what about all the touch points? So on the center here that is super soft and then you
04:44have soft on the doors there too. How soft is it? Well we've got our durometer. We've tested the main
04:49surfaces in this car. If you want to see how this compares to other cars that we've tested before
04:53use the link in the description. Now what about build quality? Yeah look that all feels pretty nice
04:59and solid. I may as well call out while I'm here the faux carbon fiber along the doors there.
05:05Very sporty looking. Let's talk infotainment. So this is an eight inch color infotainment system.
05:12We have a detailed review of this if you want to click up here you can watch that but today I'll
05:16take you through a brief overview. Let's start with the basics. That's your home screen there.
05:20You have some shortcut buttons directly beneath it and then you can customize these menus in terms of
05:25what appears and which shortcuts you have on display. On the radio front you have AM, FM, DAB
05:32plus digital radio so full coverage there and in terms of smartphone mirroring you have
05:36Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. This is what Apple CarPlay looks like. Full screen integration,
05:41nice and high resolution and fairly quick as well. Let's have a look at what Android Auto looks like.
05:48There it is. It looks nice and sharp. Yep all very straightforward. In terms of other features
05:54you've got you also have inbuilt satellite navigation and voice recognition. Keep in mind
05:59as well that the voice recognition will forward commands through to your phone as well for
06:03smarter interpretation. Now in addition to the infotainment screen you've got another screen
06:08at the top there that contains things like the safety systems, you've got trip computer, what the
06:12all-wheel drive system's doing. It's an interesting way of doing things so normally you would just
06:17integrate all of that ahead of the driver or on the infotainment screen but they've moved it up
06:20there. It seems to work fairly well and it gives you all of the information you need whenever you
06:24need it. That's also where you're going to find some of the extra cameras that I'll run you through
06:28shortly. Okay moving on to safety technology. So you have low and high speed autonomous emergency
06:33braking with pedestrian detection. You have a blind spot assistant built into the wing mirror,
06:38radar cruise control, a lane keeping assistant, rear cross traffic alert and then you also have
06:43a litany of cameras. So instead of a 360 degree camera this does it in a slightly interesting way.
06:49Let me show you. So if I push the view button on the steering wheel I get to cycle between cameras
06:54on the top screen and that's pretty handy because it means that I'll be able to figure out where I'm
06:59going without having to be in reverse and then when you do select reverse you get the side view
07:05which helps you with not curving your wheels and then down here on the main camera you get this
07:09full reverse screen. Now this is a really high quality camera so you can see there it's quite
07:13high definition. You only get rear parking sensors though, there's no front parking sensors which is
07:18a bit disappointing but you do get those guidelines there. So it is a pretty comprehensive
07:22package and I think this is a better implementation than a 360 camera which generally isn't very high
07:28quality. This is far more usable and I think that drivers are going to prefer this kind of setup.
07:33Okay so I'm going to interrupt the video just for one second. Subaru owners that are watching this
07:39tell me in the comments section below what is Subaru ownership like? Is it good? Are you happy
07:44with them? Are they doing everything you want them to do? What could they do better? I'm keen to hear
07:48from Subaru owners. I want to know what the fuss is about the brand. Moving on to comfort. So I
07:53forgot to mention earlier that Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are both wired so not a wireless
07:57setup. In terms of connectivity though you have two 2.1 amp USB ports up the front here with an
08:03auxiliary input. You also have a 12 volt outlet and then if you dive into the center console you
08:08have another two 2.1 amp USB-A ports and another 12 volt outlet so you are fully covered here in
08:14terms of your power requirements. Where are you going to store your things? So your phone can easily
08:19fit in the cup holders and then it fits down the front there as well. There's like a gripped tab to
08:24hold it in. Coffee cups. You've got to be careful even though you've got teeth they sort of sit quite
08:32high and it means you might take the lid off as you go grabbing that and spill coffee everywhere.
08:37Bottle storage. Bottle easily fits in there and then the little retractable lips stop it from
08:43coming out. Then inside the door you also have storage for a bottle and other odds and ends as
08:48well. The center console itself is massive. It's really nice and deep and you also have plenty of
08:53room in there to put your bits and pieces although that won't quite close but it is quite a big
08:57compartment and then down here you have the glove box which is fairly decent sized. Let's talk
09:03comfort. So you have dual zone automatic climate control. You have heated seats for the first row.
09:09You have electric seat adjustment for the driver with memory as well. In terms of the seats
09:15themselves I reckon they're really cool. So the design I love. You've got those perforated sections
09:19in the center that stops you kind of sticking to the seat on hot days. You also get that contrast
09:24stitching. The seats themselves hug you in nicely and they're really comfy when you sit in them.
09:29Steering wheel as well. You get that orange highlight in there with the paddle shifters. It's
09:33quite a sporty looking steering wheel. All of these controls are easy to reach from the drive seat and
09:37you have a big old sunroof here on the top spec as well. We're in the back seat of the XV. Let's talk
09:44about space. So I've got a pretty decent amount of knee room, heaps of toe room and head room is okay.
09:50It's a little compromised off to the side there but keep in mind this seat's quite far back so
09:54I'm surprised at how much leg room I actually have here compared to some of the small SUVs on the
09:59market. In terms of creature comforts let's have a look. So you've got a center armrest there with
10:03two cup holders. Pop your bottle in there. You've also got bottle storage in the doors as well.
10:09There's no center air vents or USB charging here which is a little bit disappointing.
10:14You do get matte pockets or matte pocket rather just here. I was expecting to see one there.
10:18Now the interesting thing here is yes you have ISOFIX points on the two outboard seats but
10:23you have to construct this seat belt yourself basically for the center passenger. So I don't
10:30love that system. I just wish they had like a normal seat belt setup and it is also worth pointing
10:34out you get that same seat design so you get those perforations and also the highlight stitching just
10:39here. One of the downsides to this not being an SUV is that you don't get a great deal of cargo
10:44space. No power tailgate either. Just here you've got a little over 300 litres of cargo space and
10:50visually you can tell that there isn't a huge amount of room there. So I'll show you what it
10:54looks like with the bags in a sec. You've got a little light on the side there. You've got some
10:58hooks and then beneath the cargo floor you have a space saver spare tyre. Let's drop our bags in.
11:06See what that looks like. There's one. So that doesn't fit long ways but sideways it fits in
11:14and if you do need a little bit more room you can ditch that. Look at that, I've made that
11:18completely dirty. My wife would be unimpressed. You can drop this then and that expands the space to
11:27just over 750 litres. So what is the Subaru XV like to drive? We'll start off with what is
11:37powering this and it is a 2 litre naturally aspirated petrol engine. It makes 115 kilowatts
11:44of power and 196 newton meters of torque. Now if that doesn't sound like much that's because
11:50it isn't much. So the reason I laugh a little bit there is because one of the biggest issues we've
11:54had with this car previously is that it was always just a little bit gutless and that's kind
11:59of what's happening here. It's all made it to a continuously variable transmission which means
12:03it has no defined gears. Yes you can put it into a manual mode where it has a set number of gear
12:08ratios but for the most part if you nail it it will just make a whole bunch of noise and sit
12:12within its peak torque band. If I do that now, yeah I think it's safe to say that the speed is
12:20leisurely rather than fast. So you're not really going to notice that when you're in the car on
12:25your own but if you do have friends in the car and you've got it loaded up with gear
12:28probably going to become a little bit more evident. Subaru claims a combined fuel economy of
12:337 litres per 100 k's. Let's see what we're sitting at. 7.3, hey that's not too bad. So that's pretty
12:40much bang on the official claim. Yes it is a smaller engine which means it's not going to
12:45have as much punch but the upshot is that you're not going to use a great deal of fuel while you're
12:49driving around. You've only got two drive modes to pick from and you select them here on the
12:53steering wheel. You have your standard mode and then one push of that button puts it into SI drive.
12:57You can see the revs climb immediately and then when I get on the throttle it's more eager to
13:01jump up and give me more revs so that is an easy transition between those modes. Subaru claims a
13:070-100 time of 10.4 seconds. We put it up against our stopwatch and this is how it went.
13:27Let's move on to ride. Now this is one of the things that I praise the Subaru Outback for. Now
13:33if you want to watch our Subaru Outback review click up here to watch that one. I praise the
13:38Outback for its ride because it was just really well tuned, really nice and compliant and just
13:43handled country roads well. It's a similar story here in the XV. It just feels nice and compliant.
13:50It's not too firm, it's not too soft, it's right there in the middle and it means that when you
13:54are soaking up some country miles like this everything feels nice and comfortable. There
13:58is though quite a bit of tyre noise and you'll notice it more when you're on the course chip
14:02sections of road. It just comes into the cabin and it can be a little bit unpleasant but
14:06if you turn the stereo up it drowns a little bit of that out. Let's talk handling. So it sits a
14:11little bit higher but it doesn't really affect its handling. It tucks in nicely through corners
14:16and the big advantage of this car over some other cars in this segment is that it's permanent
14:20all-wheel drive which means you get that little bit of extra traction compared to an on-demand
14:24or a front-wheel drive car. Turning circle comes in at 10.8 metres. That's actually pretty decent
14:30for a permanent all-wheel drive and it means that with a bit of luck you won't have to be doing any
14:37three-point turns anytime soon. On the visibility front I can see clearly down the front there I
14:42have the blind spot monitor built into the wing mirror. Visibility out the rear is excellent. It's
14:46a really big envelope there so there's clear vision out the rear and for the most part this
14:51is easy to park thanks to that camera setup that pops up on the screen there. That's going to come
14:55in really handy if you're not entirely confident with parking. Okay so I thought given it's an
15:00XV we should do a little bit of light off-roading in it but I'm not going to send it down the rocks
15:05because every like four-wheel drive we take down there it hits beneath it and I think that it might
15:11just rip the whole sump out of this and we'll end up with a Subaru XV that doesn't really work but
15:16I've got this little course here so it's got a seesaw that'll send us up 25 degrees and then it
15:20has an offset mogul which will test how the all-wheel drive system works and test whether
15:24traction control can manage itself. Now in terms of the actual stats you have ground clearance of
15:29220 millimeters. You have an approach angle of 18 degrees which is the angle of the face you can
15:34approach before you hit anything. That's actually quite little compared to something like a dual
15:39cab ute which is also part of the reason you don't want to be doing anything too crazy in this
15:43because you will hit all of the plastic on the front there but the departure angle of 27 degrees
15:47is actually pretty reasonable. If you want a better idea of what all those things mean and
15:51how four-wheel drive controls work click up here to watch a video we recorded previously that
15:56explains it all to you and given this is a permanent all-wheel drive it should actually
16:00handle this fairly easily. You do have X modes as well so these are drive modes for off-road
16:06driving so I've popped that on to snow and dirt. We've got all of our things set up there.
16:12I can actually feel the hill descent control has automatically activated. Let's see how we go here.
16:18Nice little bit of tilt there. I'm liking that. It's actually
16:25it's funny because it feels like I'm going to fall out of the car here. Okay here's our crossover.
16:31Old car seesawing there as we roll forward and then go up the other side. Now at the other end
16:37of this when we get to the offset mogul we're going to have two tires effectively in the air
16:43and it's going to try and use the traction control to give itself enough movement to get
16:49out of there. So right now we have a tire completely off the ground. I'm just going to
16:52lay into the throttle gently. That is so cool. That's actually getting out of there without any
17:00dramas. Fantastic. So that is a sign of a really good all-wheel drive system. I can see how it's
17:06responding to it all up the top there. Even dual cab utes when they don't have the rear diff lock
17:12running they struggle to get out of situations like this. So really impressive there that the
17:17XV can do light off-roading but stuff that could see some dual cab utes stuck if they don't have
17:22the four-wheel drive modes and diff locks activated. So really impressive for a standard vehicle.
17:30So you're probably going to think I'm weird for liking the Subaru XV as much as I do but
17:35I don't know I'm just really impressed that you can drive it in and around the city and then if
17:38you do a little bit of off-roading it can do that as well. The off-road system and the sorry the
17:42all-wheel drive system rather is really capable. It has 220 mil of ground clearance which means
17:47has about as much ground clearance as most dual cab utes do as well. So you're going to be able
17:52to clear most of the things that they do and because it's permanent all-wheel drive you've
17:55got that reassurance that it's not really going to get stuck in anything that I guess isn't too
18:00serious and you can do a lot of mods to these as well to bring them up a little higher. Fit them
18:03with all-terrain tyres if you do want to do something a little more in depth but it is let
18:08down by one critical feature and that is the engine. The two litre just I don't know it's okay
18:13if you're on your own but the second you load it up and put your things on the roof and whatever
18:17you want to do it starts getting a little bit sluggish. So I would love to see this available
18:20with the two and a half litre out of the outback or even a turbocharged engine. I think that would
18:25make this such a compelling package. Don't bother with the hybrid it is pretty much as bad as the
18:30Forester hybrid which we're really not a fan of but if you can get away with the engine and you're
18:33not too fussed by that this is a really good package. So let me know what you think of the
18:37comments section below. If you did enjoy this video please make sure you hit the like button,
18:41share it with your friends and if you haven't done so already hit subscribe on our channel
18:45but always keen for your feedback but until next time take it easy.