Test drive Subaru XV: when you are underestimated

Whole photo shoot

And other questions to Subaru XV

This car is as if woven from contradictions. Boxer brand two-liter boxer, four-wheel drive, albeit through a multi-plate clutch, clearance of 220 millimeters. But 150 power forces per one and a half tons of curb weight and acceleration of 10.6 seconds to hundreds are not very outstanding data. Consumption bribes: 6 liters of the 95th per hundred track mileage. But at the same time, the trunk is 310 liters, not for long trips. Let’s figure it out?

In Moscow of the 1990s, many respected Subaru cars – for honest four-wheel drive and the phenomenal stability of these cars on the road, as if repealing the laws of physics. A friend of mine then got so far from reality that in winter at 120 km / h he flew out on his Impreza on an icy turn into a ditch. But when he healed and returned behind the wheel, he did not change the brand.

For more than 20 years, that Impreza has come a long way and even gave birth to the heir – XV, we have on the test restyling of his second generation. This really is not Impreza, but a completely different car, the manufacturer insists. Less fighting and more “civilian”? One way or another, this XV has been on sale in Russia for two years now – and what can the journalist who has been traveling for a week add to the experience that its real owners have accumulated? Unless subjective personal impressions.

Sports or fitness?

Armchairs of the front row XV promise a certain sportiness: pronounced support for the hips and back, comfortable head restraints. Two keys on the side of the lower cushion adjust the seat in six positions and allow the driver to grow 180 centimeters quickly enough to find a comfortable position. There are two complaints, both standard: a short lower pillow, lumbar support would not hurt.

But to promise does not mean to get married: the engine XV is reluctant to rise from the bottom, there is no jerk, the response to the accelerator pedal starts from over 2 thousand revolutions, and in order to feel the start of acceleration, you have to turn the engine up to about 3 thousand. He wakes up at 4 thousand, and becomes quite peppy and cheerful at 5-6 thousand revolutions. The manual mode of the Lineartronic transmission, which can simulate 7 fixed gears, doesn’t change the picture very much – moreover, it seems that the engine has just been sucked in precisely to save the resource of this variator. Manual mode and gearshift paddles do not help much, overtaking on the track have to be planned. Or to keep the virtual downshift all the time – but then the flow immediately flies from the average 6.6 liters per hundred beyond the “top ten”, and the engine sound becomes annoying. Noise isolation is not my hobby, test XV honestly admits.

I understand why the familiar young mother, reseeding to the new XV with the ancient Toyota Corolla, first of all, after buying a new car, made an additional “Shumka”. At the same time, the girl does not have complaints about the dynamics of complaints: she describes her Subaru acceleration as “pressed – and flew away”; if earlier she was hurt on the road even by KAMAZ garbage trucks hanging in the rear-view mirror, then in the XV she always feels confident. And another Subaru driver, the owner of Forester for the second time in a row, having steered the test XV for half an hour, and in general summed up: “an impudent flea”.

The participle “steering” is not accidental here. Insolence XV is not in dynamic accelerations, in any case, not in longitudinal ones, but in controllability and stability. Beautiful tight steering wheel, with good feedback, while, despite the clearance of 220 mm, there is no felling. The turn that you usually enter at 70 km / h, at XV you go at 100 km / h. Yes, centrifugal force is still in effect, everything that was not fixed in the cabin fell and went, but despite the speed, elevation changes and variable slope, the XV maintains a given trajectory – in winter, apparently, this quality is absolutely priceless.

The “plate” of the opposing engine adds a bit to this harmony – a low center of gravity and a minimum of sprung mass, which do not flounder in the engine compartment, as is inevitable in most cars. You feel there: here is the box of the body, and inside is the engine. In the XV, the body and engine are perceived as almost a single whole, it is a more dense, downed, monolithic car. Another observation is how the asymmetric all-wheel drive XV works: when you press the accelerator pedal, there is not even a second slip of the included axis, there is an observable moment of its “poke”.

It seems that here it is, the “trick” XV – a successful combination of high ground clearance, rather long-stroke, but impenetrable (more speed – less pits, speed bumps you can not notice) the suspension and transmission, the exact distribution of torque along the axes. As a result, the car stands on the road high, but reliable. This cat has long legs, but tenacious claws.

Although the stability of the XV is a two-edged sword, the car easily provokes the driver to dangerous maneuvers. Fortunately, the brakes stop the car at any speed without any problems – the deceleration is even and powerful.

Crossover or hatchback?

“You can ride it with your family to your summer cottage,” assured the top manager of the European brand, demonstrating their new product at that time – a hatchback with a tiny trunk, a practically non-existent second row of seats and a clearance of as much as 145 millimeters. And I silently rummaged through the phone to find and show him a photo on which their flagship SUV buried waist-deep in the snow – it was I who was trying to get to my dacha a week ago after the snowfall, without waiting for the tractor.

The dacha potential of XV does not raise questions: 22 centimeters of ground clearance, the absence of protruding elements from below, bumpers drenched in black plastic, sills and wheel arches, X-mode, which works both as an off-road vehicle and as a descent assistance system. And the same as on the asphalt, excellent suspension performance for five-plus. The grader’s test area with unexpected small, but hard mounds, where you usually need to slow down and reload them at low speed, otherwise the car beats and jumps, you pass on the “move” at XV. All the same owner XV told how a navigator once paved the way for her to the Belarusian border along a forest road near Smolensk, which ended in a tractor track. Nothing, I drove.

Youth or family?

In XV it is comfortable to ride together, acceptable – four, but this is the limit: albeit in the back row and unexpectedly spacious, even for a passenger 190 cm tall, but the seat is molded for two riders. There is nothing special for them to do there: no sockets, no USB connectors. Moreover, miracles do not happen: everything that was presented to the rear passengers was taken away from the luggage compartment. So four of us in the city or together on a Sunday shopping is normal, if that is the case – the rear backs of the XV fold flat on the floor. But if you are planning on a long trip in the same quartet or planning to meet three friends with luggage at the airport, it is better to prepare the box on the roof in advance.

Music on the road is unlikely to please you: the sound of the XV audio system, it seemed to me, is a maximum of three. Moreover, when I got into the settings, it turned out that they had played with the equalizer – high and low frequencies were pulled to the limit. And when I returned the factory settings, it turned out very sad. The rest of the XV is quite a child of the XXI century: four displays (central, alas, glare), four USB-connectors and three sockets (two in front, one in the trunk), Bluetooth, a mobile application. However, if it was possible to cling to the smartphone via Bluetooth with XV, then for some reason there is no way to connect to it through the downloaded mobile application.

But the EyeSight system works flawlessly, providing both perimeter security and driving comfort. Everything as we love: active cruise control, keeping in the lane with taxiing, automatic emergency braking when driving, both forward and reverse. The start-stop system when starting off the XV from a traffic light, on the contrary, does not “slow down” at all.

So, we summarize. Advantages of Subaru XV: suspension, steering, brakes, electronic assistants, start-stop system, rear row space. Cons: dynamics, sound insulation, acoustic system, paintwork thickness (it’s better to paste over the film immediately after purchase, servicemen advise “not for printing”), a small trunk. Yes – another price!

New or used?

A few years ago, XV was one of the best-priced offers of all-wheel drive cars on the Russian market. Today, for the new XV 2020, in the Premium ES configuration, as we have on the test, they are asking for 2,459,900 rubles – as part of a special offer. At the same time, the corporate program Subaru Select offers for 1.79 million exactly the same car of 2018 – from the dealer’s internal fleet, with a mileage of 33,339 kilometers. And in private announcements you can find XV even for 1.6 million. With such a loss of value, 35% in two years, the secondary market looks definitely more attractive. A good argument for getting a dealer discount when buying a new XV, right?

Author

Zotikov Alexander, the observer of the portal “MotorPage”

Edition

MotorPage.Ru

Photo

author photo