Jason on Cars

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.

Once on the road though, it is very unexceptional. It brags about a 250 hp engine, and a larger displacement than even the WRX gets, but when you put the foot down, it goes all the way to the floor and you really can�t tell. I had three passengers in the car with me, we stopped at a red light and at green, I floored it. Nobody noticed that I was trying to hotrod it, nobody noticed that I was �driving fast.� Maybe that was because I wasn�t driving fast, I wasn�t even accelerating fast. I wasn�t even making a lot of noise. I have to say, it really drove like a small, underpowered/anemic SUV rather than the $38,000 Subaru that the sticker on the window claims it is.

I�m sure the Tribeca will find an audience. The presence of the Baja proves that people will buy anything with a Subaru badge on it, and this is a utility vehicle. However, it is in no way even close to a �sports� utility vehicle. With it�s Subaru off-road handling, I�m sure it would be great in the snow and bad weather, but I think this car will find itself picking up the kids from soccer practice in the rain before you see mountain bikers and snowboarders tossing their equipment onto the top while they head out for some extreme sports.

Would I buy it? No. Would I drive it? Yes. Although, I can already hear the cackles and laughs, the jokes and the sneers.