GET A GRIP!

摘要

ENRIGHT FINDS SNOW CONDITIONS IN PORT DOUGLAS PATCHY TO SAY THE LEAST. WHERE DO you stand on 'surprise and delight'? Some cars are absolutely stuffed to the gunwales with this quality, to the extent that you can suffer surprise and delight fatigue. Yes, after a while it becomes annoying to discover a feature after driving the thing for six months that you could really have done with knowing about on day one. You feel like a putz, and that's not really the desired effect. The Subaru Outback XT either does surprise and delight quite badly or so fiendishly well that this putz has yet to discover any of it. What you see appears to be what you get. I've only latterly begun to appreciate that aspect of its personality. There are no Easter eggs, hidden drawers, secret menus, God-tier suspension settings or clandestine drive modes to develop FOMO over. Does this make it a little one-dimensional as an ownership proposition? That could be argued. I'd counter that with saying that I'd rather have a car that did one job really well rather than one that made a complete Horlicks of about five. There's a refreshing honesty and simplicity about the way that the Outback goes about its business that I value. It even steadfastly refuses to budge from its 9.1L/100km overall fuel consumption figure.