The long-term 2010 Subaru Outback 2.5i Premium that’s in our test fleet — aka my wife’s car — has had a rough first two months of ownership.
First, the optional media hub I needed to have — which has a USB plug for iPods and flash drives — wasn’t working. The dealer needed the car overnight and lent us an Impreza while it was being fixed. Once power was flowing to it, the media hub still couldn’t play music from either of our iPhones. It turns out the software has not been updated for the iPhone 3G, but if you use a 3GS, it works fine. Members of the Subaru forum I frequent say the navigation-system-equipped models with USB do work with the iPhone 3G. Bizarre. I'll have a more thorough update on this later in the month.
While moving some music files to a mound of jump drives (that’s how we get press kits these days), I got a frantic text from my wife saying the Outback was hit while parked by a semi right in front of her office. The entire back bumper was ripped off, and there was some damage to the tailgate. Luckily, the repair place said the damage wasn’t more extensive beyond the cosmetics, and repairs cost less than $2,000. I was surprised it was that low because the entire bumper needed to be replaced. At least I knew the paint would match pretty well because the car was just a month old. It took about two weeks to get everything fixed, mainly because Subaru didn’t have a spare bumper to send.
Because of the accident, we had to buy new child-safety seats. The insurance company and the companies that make the seats, say you can never be sure how an accident affects the seats. You might not be able to see hairline fractures, and the seats will be void of any warranty if something were to go wrong later.
We got one exact replacement of our Britax Boulevard, and since Carter is getting older, we replaced our Marathon with a Frontier, which can be used as a convertible to a booster. Since our youngest is now 9 months old, we had to move her from an infant seat to a convertible, and the rather large Boulevard is behind the passenger seat. I was shocked and relieved that the passenger seat could slide all the way back with this behind it. Since I often ride shotgun in the car, the ample legroom is terrific, and it's the No. 1 reason we traded in the 2008 for the 2010.
Two months into ownership, we have less than 2,000 miles on the Outback, and it’s averaging just over 22 mpg, which is what I’d expect for the heavy traffic my wife sometimes drives it in, especially in winter when we let it warm up a few minutes each morning. The 2008 rarely averaged above 20 mpg.
One last update regarding those WeatherTech floormats I tested a month ago. I saw comments that there shouldn’t be such a big gap on the passenger side, and indeed, once we got the car back from the repair shop, I moved the mat around, and it aligned much better than before.