So, my beloved 2013 Crosstrek had a high-speed encounter with a suicidal deer on a rural Montana highway a few days ago. It was pretty exciting -- the airbags deployed and everything, and my dog is probably going to need extensive canine psychotherapy. š I just had a few cuts from the airbag deployment, but the Crosstrek suffered far worse -- the left-front quarter of the car was pretty well caved in, and for a 7-year-old vehicle with 145,000 miles, the damage was way more than enough for my insurance carrier to total the thing.
Man, I loved that car.
Anyhow, it was time to start looking for a new vehicle ... and for me, there was no question that it would be a new Crosstrek. I'm still totally impressed with Subaru, and the model is a great fit for my lifestyle. (One of the salesmen I encountered tried to push me into a Forester, and I openly laughed at him. š) I did a lot of looking, even driving one of the 6-speed manuals, but pretty quickly decided that getting a 2021 with the 2.5 engine was the only way to go. In a lot of ways, the specs of the new Sport model would have worked well for me, but man -- the yellow interior accents on those cars are hilariously and incredibly ugly. I sat in one for all of ten seconds and knew I could never look at that shade of yellow for a couple hundred thousand miles. So that narrowed my search down to the Limited.
Buying a new Subaru in Montana is a challenge, especially at the beginning of a model year, because most of the dealers are low-volume and the cars are always in demand. My local dealer in Bozeman has never been very impressive, and I can also now report that buyers should avoid Subaru of Missoula like the plague. So I started looking out of state, and ended up getting an easy, fair deal at Parker Subaru in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, of all places.
I strongly prefer that cars have some color to them, so I knew I wanted either the cool gray or the pure red, and in the end the red won out ... it's a great shade of red and is going to be a less-common Crosstrek color, and honestly, the cool gray is actually really just baby blue. (And besides, my sister just bought a cool gray one.) So here it is:
I like the bright color quite a bit, though it does darken some in different light, especially when covered in road dust:
Anyway, I put 450 miles on the thing in its first two days with me, mostly two-lane mountain driving along with some dirt roads, and my initial impressions are overwhelmingly positive. This car has advanced a lot since 2013!
-- The big thing is the 2.5 liter engine ... it really makes a difference. The car is markedly more responsive on mountain grades and when passing, especially with Sport mode engaged, and it's just a more satisfying driving experience all around. While I was never really unhappy with the 2.0, a few minutes with the 2.5 convinced me that this is the engine the Crosstrek deserved all along. Unless someone's budget is really tight, I would not recommend the 2.0 anymore.
-- Most of the EyeSight features work well, and the adaptive cruise control is excellent. The lane assist features are getting better, but still aren't quite there -- in my testing, the car nearly always recognized the highway centerline, but for some reason didn't do as well identifying the striping on the road shoulder. And the automatic lane centering feature is a little jerky and problematic ... when I first started driving the car, I thought I'd gotten one with a bad front end until I realized it was just the lane centering feature doing its thing.
-- I'm with the 99.9% of Americans who find auto start/stop to be a royal pain in the butt. By my rough calculations, every time the car auto stops it saves me roughly a penny's worth of fuel -- nowhere near close to worth it.
-- The Crosstrek's LED headlights are very good, and the steering responsive headlights are better than the gimmick I thought they were. And as someone who does a lot of rural driving, I am super-happy with the automatic high beams.
-- Others here are more focused on the Head Unit than I am, but I'll just say that I'm bummed that the car no longer recognizes my ancient iPod. I need to find a new way to get my insanely large MP3 collection in the car.
Anyhow, that's it for now. I'm sure I'll have more thoughts as I keep driving. If this car were Tangerine Orange, though, it would be pretty close to perfect.
Man, I loved that car.
Anyhow, it was time to start looking for a new vehicle ... and for me, there was no question that it would be a new Crosstrek. I'm still totally impressed with Subaru, and the model is a great fit for my lifestyle. (One of the salesmen I encountered tried to push me into a Forester, and I openly laughed at him. š) I did a lot of looking, even driving one of the 6-speed manuals, but pretty quickly decided that getting a 2021 with the 2.5 engine was the only way to go. In a lot of ways, the specs of the new Sport model would have worked well for me, but man -- the yellow interior accents on those cars are hilariously and incredibly ugly. I sat in one for all of ten seconds and knew I could never look at that shade of yellow for a couple hundred thousand miles. So that narrowed my search down to the Limited.
Buying a new Subaru in Montana is a challenge, especially at the beginning of a model year, because most of the dealers are low-volume and the cars are always in demand. My local dealer in Bozeman has never been very impressive, and I can also now report that buyers should avoid Subaru of Missoula like the plague. So I started looking out of state, and ended up getting an easy, fair deal at Parker Subaru in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, of all places.
I strongly prefer that cars have some color to them, so I knew I wanted either the cool gray or the pure red, and in the end the red won out ... it's a great shade of red and is going to be a less-common Crosstrek color, and honestly, the cool gray is actually really just baby blue. (And besides, my sister just bought a cool gray one.) So here it is:
I like the bright color quite a bit, though it does darken some in different light, especially when covered in road dust:
Anyway, I put 450 miles on the thing in its first two days with me, mostly two-lane mountain driving along with some dirt roads, and my initial impressions are overwhelmingly positive. This car has advanced a lot since 2013!
-- The big thing is the 2.5 liter engine ... it really makes a difference. The car is markedly more responsive on mountain grades and when passing, especially with Sport mode engaged, and it's just a more satisfying driving experience all around. While I was never really unhappy with the 2.0, a few minutes with the 2.5 convinced me that this is the engine the Crosstrek deserved all along. Unless someone's budget is really tight, I would not recommend the 2.0 anymore.
-- Most of the EyeSight features work well, and the adaptive cruise control is excellent. The lane assist features are getting better, but still aren't quite there -- in my testing, the car nearly always recognized the highway centerline, but for some reason didn't do as well identifying the striping on the road shoulder. And the automatic lane centering feature is a little jerky and problematic ... when I first started driving the car, I thought I'd gotten one with a bad front end until I realized it was just the lane centering feature doing its thing.
-- I'm with the 99.9% of Americans who find auto start/stop to be a royal pain in the butt. By my rough calculations, every time the car auto stops it saves me roughly a penny's worth of fuel -- nowhere near close to worth it.
-- The Crosstrek's LED headlights are very good, and the steering responsive headlights are better than the gimmick I thought they were. And as someone who does a lot of rural driving, I am super-happy with the automatic high beams.
-- Others here are more focused on the Head Unit than I am, but I'll just say that I'm bummed that the car no longer recognizes my ancient iPod. I need to find a new way to get my insanely large MP3 collection in the car.
Anyhow, that's it for now. I'm sure I'll have more thoughts as I keep driving. If this car were Tangerine Orange, though, it would be pretty close to perfect.