Smallish SUV - Thinking ahead
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Anonymous
I always said my 2006 Toyota RAV4 was a “big little car” and a “little big car.” I loved the RAV4 so much that I bought a 2019 RAV4 XLE Premium (in January of this year). It has a lot of luxury features, as PP mentioned. Love it. |
Anonymous
Only crawling would satisfy the sanctimonious PP. |
Anonymous
Outbacks are definitely SUV's. Subaru loves to mrket them as cars because their whole marketing schtick is to convince progressives it is ok to drive a gas guzzling SUV but legally they are SUVs. |
Anonymous
It's funny I grew up in a part of the country that got a lot of snow and neither we, nor most of our neighbors, had SUVs. And we did just fine. Of course we didn't live in some house in the country or exurbs because back then only people who needed to live in the exurbs actually lived there. But now we have entitled folks in oversized houses chewing up land in the middle of nowhere who then need to compound their negative impact on the planet by driving everywhere in an SUV. Or maybe the OP works from home from her farm. |
Anonymous
People moved to the country or exurbs to get away from insufferable people like you. |
Anonymous
Is there a legal definition of the SUV? lol Actually they are small station wagons. |
Anonymous
I believe it has more to do with an upright seating position. Generally, an SUV's seat height from ground is higher, so the driver more or less slides in rather than drop down into the seat. Also, the roofline is higher so there is less need to duck down as well. Once seated, the driver/passenger often have a more vertical seating position, especially the leg angle, and overall higher sightline. Looking that the proportions of the Outback, it is more of a tall wagon than an SUV - although it does have a prodigious amount of ground clearance. |
Anonymous
Subaru legally considers it an SUV to get out of the fuel efficiency requirements. From https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-Subaru-Outback-called-an-SUV-when-its-a-wagon Corporate Average Fuel Economy (C.A.F.E.) or simply put, it makes good business sense to classify it as an SUV instead of car/wagon. What Subaru is actually doing is playing the “CAFE Game” that has become popular among automotive manufacturers in the past 15 years. By labeling the Outback as an SUV, which falls under light duty trucks, it is held to lower emissions and fuel economy standards. CAFE is a long and complicated discussion to get into, but here is where you can read about it in detail. Corporate Average Fuel Economy - Wikipedia Essentially, all vehicles produced by a manufacture fall into various categories based on vehicle footprint, 2WD/4WD, GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating) etc. Then they add up the metrics from this various categories to come up with the CAFE number. So the ratio of cars to trucks produced plays greatly into the CAFE average for the manufacturer. Since Subaru doesn’t actually produce a traditional light duty vehicle (a truck), but has vehicles that fit the category due to footprint, AWD and GVWR, this allows them to take advantage of classifying some of their vehicles. This helps improve their CAFE rating because those light duty vehicles are held to lower emission and fuel economy standards than cars. It’s not well known, but Subaru engines aren’t the cleanest burning engines and the AWD, that is a big selling point for Subaru, also hurts mileage. While Subaru is playing by the rules here, essentially taking advantage of this technicality helps them meet their CAFE standard. Since they are meeting their CAFE standard for the next few years using existing engine platforms and technology they are able to delay investments in drivetrain technology that would achieve greater fuel economy. While this is a poor reason, for a small manufacturer like Subaru, it saves them a tremendous amount of money and allows them to spread out those future investment costs in the meantime. Ultimately they will need to up their game as the CAFE standards increase every year until 2025 under the current agreement established during the Obama Administration. Love. |
Anonymous
Unfortunately there is no getting away from the selfish people living in the middle of nowhere whose pollution and endless driving negatively impact the rest of us. But hey Audi makes some great commercials that make smug people feel good about conspicuous consumption and killing the planet! |
Anonymous
| Get a Wrangler. Seriously. You won’t regret it for a moment. |
Anonymous
Blah, blah, blah. |
Anonymous
| You can find them in most vehicles. Worst case you find a dealer to custom order it for you. Thats what I do with mine. |
Anonymous
I had to laugh at this as I did and absolutely love mine. |
Anonymous
It doesn't matter what you drive vs. how much. So, how many miles have you put on your vehicles in the past year? |
Anonymous
Same! This is what I was going to suggest. |