Let�s get it right out in the open. This car looks weird. It is far from elegant and beautiful, far from sleek and sexy, far from what you even think of when you think of Subaru. To put it simply, it�s sort of homely. With that said however, I can�t go so far as to say that it�s ugly, or hideous.
If you look at the right pictures of it, it looks sort of like a mutated CR-V, or a RAV4, slightly stretched and a little higher off the ground. From other angles, it looks more like a Honda Odyssey or some other as-close-to-a-minivan-without-actually-being-a-minivan-thing that you can get. In my opinion, it�s the backend that�s the most unforgiving, like some sort of alien Cyclops.
Once inside, it plays the same story over again. Not an especially elegant interior, but not necessarily offensive either. It feels a little over-designed actually, and in some cases, there are some things that are so different that you almost feel that they made it unique just to be different, not to be better. The dials are easy to read, but not always presented in an intuitive fashion, the temperature controls are nice with integrated temp displays inside the rotating temperature knob, and the navigation system has a touch screen.
Clearly I could have done worse for this trip. I can’t imagine if I would have gotten a Nissan Titan or other ridiculously sized vehicles, or even a two-seater; the wife and I had luggage you know. But as it turns out, wagons make great road-trip cars. We filled this one with two bags of clothes, some food, and a wake board. The back seat laid down nicely and I had no problem fitting it all in. My wife and I hopped in, and we too fit well. It is definitely a smaller car though, which you notice as soon as you sit down and realize how close the passenger is to you.
