2012 Subaru Outback 3.6R
My new car!
Why did I get this?
The last vehicle I had was a 1997 GMC Sonoma, and it did alright for me. Ultimately, though, it had a few things working against it, that just weren't things that could be fixed. It was rear wheel drive. Even if a limited-slip differential off a Oldsmobile Bravada could be found, you'd still only have rear wheel drive. Doesn't work real well in snow and ice, and we get both here.
I fit in it. One other person could fit in it too. Beyond that, you'd better be real small if you wanted to ride with me. My niece and nephew both liked it just for that reason, but even they were outgrowing it.
Manual transmission. Even if I got everything working just right, I never did get the hang of shifting it, and it fought me most of the time. No smooth ride, and a frustration to drive.
Four cylinder engine. Not much power, though it worked alright, but coupled with the manual transmission, it wasn't a good match. The engine didn't have the power to force the clutch to slip as needed, the end result being lugging, stalling, and general misbehavior. Not good in the middle of traffic. On top of that, the clutch was never consistent. Engagement changed from drive to drive, and as a result, you couldn't figure out the engagement and so ended up risking a stall every time you drove it.
I finally realized that, if everything were fixed, brand new and working, I'd still have a four-cylinder engine, a manual transmission I couldn't drive well, and an open rear differential that likely as not would get stuck in snow and ice. That's when I started looking for something else.
The search for something else
I had no idea what was out there, or what I wanted. I had some ideas, and most of those were less about what I wanted, than what I didn't want.
Manual transmission? Out
Four cylinder? I'd rather not.
Rear-wheel-drive? Not happening.
After those, I started thinking about what I would like to have.
Fits me, and my friends? Check.
Enclosed cargo area like my truck? Yeah, that'd be nice.
Don't wanna get stuck? Better have four wheel drive, or at least all wheel drive.
The truck did get good mileage. Would like to have something that does fairly well.
More power. Not necessarily a V8 with a blower, but I'd been in some situations that having more power would have been really appreciated.
Heated seats? I put them in the truck, and man they were nice on cold mornings. Which for our area, is most mornings.
Then there were things that I didn't really care about.
Color? Doesn't really matter. I've had white, and I've had red. White was hard to keep clean, but looked good. The dark red on the truck hid dirt surprisingly well.
Truck? SUV? Car? No preference to start with. Didn't want something huge, as I do live and drive in the city. Something tiny wouldn't haul my friends, so econoboxes were out, but they were mostly out to begin with. They work, until the weather gets nasty. I was tired of having to worry about the weather.
Craigslist
I started my search here. What's out there? What does it cost? What about this, or that, or something else? Maybe here, maybe there, maybe somewhere else... After looking for a while, I had a lot of tabs open, started keeping notes, etc. There were probably good deals, but at this point, I didn't even know what I wanted to spend, or anything. I did start with small trucks, and looked at Toyota Tacoma's and Chevrolet Colorado/GMC Canyon, Honda Ridgeline, the Ford Ranger, Dodge Dakota, and pretty much anything else I could think of. I also wandered through some other stuff too, as well as reading car reviews of anything that caught my interest. Having a subscription to ConsumerReports.com came in handy, and I used it a lot.
As I continued looking, I started refining my search. Ford Escapes seemed alright, but I didn't like the lack of four wheel drive. I'd have to go up to an Explorer for that. Their all wheel drive option was really front-wheel-drive, with some ability to route power to the back wheels in case the fronts started slipping. Didn't really sound like what I wanted. I drove one several years back, and it seemed nice enough, but the deep door sills were definitely not okay. I was used to my truck, where the sills were flush with the floor.
The Explorer had the four wheel drive option, but lousy fuel mileage. Seemed a lot larger than what I wanted, too. The Explorer Sporttrack with the extended cab and little bed seemed alright, but the back seat was tighter than I would have liked. The one I looked at seemed fine, but I was looking on a 90* day, and it was hot, and there were lots of little marks here and there, and at the time, I didn't really know what I was looking for, or at.
I pretty much wrote off the entire light-truck category after looking at the lack of leg room in the back seat of the models with the four-door cabs. Yeah, you could fit more people in there, but they wouldn't be comfortable. And I'd still have to get a canopy for the bed. Which would be full of empty space I wouldn't use, but couldn't put my friends in, either. Not working for me.
Larger trucks didn't make much more sense, for mostly the same reasons, plus lousy mileage. I looked at the Avalanche, as a friend of mine has one and likes it, but the mileage kind of ruled that out. These are large trucks, and with V8 engines, they get large truck gas mileage.
The cars I started looking at included the Ford Fusion (can you tell we visited a Ford dealership?) and when the rep asked me which on I'd like to try, I asked for the one that didn't have leather seats. All these cars were sitting in the sun, closed up, and incredibly hot. Every one we opened up, I popped two doors, let them air out, and then got in. The Fusion seems like a nice car, but I didn't fit in it. I hit my head getting in, and back out, and that kind of ruled it out for me. We didn't look at the Taurus, and maybe we should have, but it seemed like a big, wide car.
After all that, we wandered over to another dealership nearby. I think they sold Mazdas, and after rolling around the lot (We were driving my brother's F350 crew-cab, so we could see a long ways. Unfortunately, so could all the sales reps.) we parked and set out on foot. We were chased down and greeted by one of the nicest sales reps I've had the good fortune to meet. He knew his stuff, he knew the vehicles, and just let us go at our own pace. I'm really thankful my brother was along to distract them, so I could sit in the vehicles and try to visualize myself actually owning and using them.
We looked at a Toyota RAV4, the Honda CR-V, and Mazda's little SUV, whatever it was called, I don't remember. Also checked out a GMC Acadia, and kinda liked it. I didn't fit in the RAV4 or the CR-V, which kind of surprised me. The fit wasn't bad, but it was off by enough that I could tell it wasn't going to be a good fit long term. That was pretty much why we checked out the Acadia, and I actually did fit in that one. GMC seems to do alright building trucks to fit tall people. At the same dealership, we sat in a Lincoln, which I wasn't going to even look at, but my brother wanted to look at it, so I went and sat in it with him. Big car, leather, and wayyyyyyyy outside the really rough price range I'd set for myself. I don't remember what it cost, but I wanted out of it as soon as I heard it. No way I could afford that, and on top of that, I felt like I was sitting in a bath tub. The windows were above my shoulders.
After that, I started noticing a lot of the cars have the really high beltline, where the windows are really high up on the car. I didn't like that, as I very much like to drive with the windows down and my arm resting on the window sill. That was one other complaint about the truck. Driving with the window down, the air would rush by, hit the B pillar, turn 90 degrees and shoot in my ear. Not fun. After sitting in the Lincoln, I started looking for window lines that were lower.
Looking around Craigslist found a Ford Freestyle, which I'd never heard of. 2006, if I remember right. I had to go look up what this thing was, as I'd never heard of it. Finally realized it was Ford's take on the Subaru Outback. Seemed nice, but I never did get in one to try it out. Probably should have, but they don't seem to make them any more.
On a whim one night, I looked up Subaru Baja's, as they were little, unique, car/truck hybrids kind of like the El Camino or Ford Ranchero, but more modern. I wasn't real crazy about what I was finding, as most of the cars had a few years on them, and more mileage, transmission replacements, etc. Then I found out that Subaru had stopped making them several years earlier. Still, they caught my interest, and I looked into them enough to find you had an all wheel drive, turbocharger-equipped four cylinder engine, and from what I could see of the back seat, there might be room for people my height back there. It had potential.
That research led to more looking at what Subaru had. A couple reasons for this, because one, my sister has a 2008 Legacy GT, and I'd ridden in it with her. My mom has a 2014 Outback. Another friend of mine has an Impreza, and it was alright, but the back seat was not quite big enough for someone my size. Not bad, just not quite big enough. Subaru's have all wheel drive, something they are very proud of, and I liked that. Not a huge car, but seemed like it had room, even in the back seat. At least in the photos, anyways. Mostly equipped with four-cylinder engines, but you could get the Outback and Legacy with the turbo four-cylinder, or a six cylinder.
Oh, hey.
Six cylinder, check.
All wheel drive? Check.
Reliable? I was seeing cars with 300,000 miles on them for sale on Craigslist...regularly. Yeah, seems like they are.
Automatic transmission? Yup.
Low beltline? Yeah, actually.
Covered cargo area? Outback yes, Legacy, well it has a trunk, so I guess that counts.
Good mileage? Yeah, got that covered.
Hmmm, so I need to be looking at Subaru's. They seem to check more of the boxes of stuff I'm looking for.
The Search Turns to Subaru
The Inland Northwest likes their Subaru's. They are everywhere. And lots of them on Craigslist.
Impreza's missed on the engine and back seat space, so they were out. BRZ's are rear-wheel-drive, so they were out. WRX's were mostly hatchbacks, and smaller than Impreza's, so they were out too. I could see why people would want them, though. Small and fast, though nothing above a four cylinder engine available. Above that, you have the Forester. Taller, boxy looking, and still not available with anything other than a four cylinder. Too boxy looking for my taste, and a solid miss on the engine. Even if it does have a turbo, you're still only getting power off four cylinders. There are limits to what can be done with that little displacement.
That leaves the Legacy and the Outback. Limiting my choices to just the six cylinder options on Craigslist, I found a few, mostly on dealer lots. I did find a red one in Idaho, and after thinking it over, I called on it. Turns out the guy had already sold it. Oh well. That ended up working in my favor.
I kept looking, trying to run another one down. Started looking at dealer lots, and found one over in Auburn that had a 2012 Outback 3.6R. By now, I had my list of things to look for fairly well narrowed down, at least for Subaru Outbacks. Six cylinders, all wheel drive, cold weather package with heated seats. No leather. Even better. No Eyesight (I work with computers day in and day out. I don't trust them to interpret video data correctly all the time. And I don't wanna find out the hard way it has a problem reading through some weather condition.), no navigation (I have my phone, it gets the job done just fine) simple climate controls (two knobs and some buttons, this works for me!) Roomy back seat, because I have several friends who are six feet, and going to lunch with a group means we need space. Enclosed cargo space. Fold the rear seats down, get a full truck bed pretty much. Rear view camera. This is kind of nice to have. Just wish it was mounted inside the rear glass instead of outside. 44,000 miles accumulated in four years. US average is 12K a year, this car hadn't run even that. Low mileage, four years old, and priced in my range.
I went over to Auburn the next weekend. Met up with my sister, and we went for a test drive. Two of them, actually. First we looked at the car. Then we looked at a gold colored one next to it. Both my sister and I smelled something in the gold car, and decided to give it a pass. Don't know what it was, and didn't really want the leather seats it had, either.
From what I could see, there were some marks on the light-colored cloth upholstery, but I could live with those. It probably wasn't going to be much better with me in it. Minor scratches around the door handle cups. Again, to be expected. Maybe they could be polished out, I don't know. She noted the cargo cover was there, though the cupholder divider in the front was missing, and the right-side A-pillar trim had come loose. Stereo was way out of whack. Lots of bass, not much treble, we ended up getting that adjusted by the sales rep.
The test drive was pretty much everything I hoped it would be. We drove around. Found a stop light. Stopped, started, figured out the controls. One thing I did want to try was freeway on-ramps, and my sister found a good one. Left turn from a dead stop at a stop light, and we needed to punch it to get ahead of traffic in the next lane. The car ran hard, fast, and left the rest of the traffic behind, and I wasn't even flooring it. It just moved out.
After we drove that, I drove a second car, this one a black four cylinder with the CVT transmission. I will say I liked the CVT, and if they'd had one with the six, I'd have seriously considered getting it. As it was, the four-cylinder didn't boost as hard at the freeway onramp we'd tried before, and I ended up having to work in with traffic in the next lane. That pretty much decided against that for me. The transmission I think was alright, but the engine didn't quite have the power for a car of this size.
I found out that car dealerships get rated on Yelp too. Didn't know that. The dealership I went to was Mike Scarff Subaru, of Auburn Wa.
Highly recommend them. Highly recommend them.
If you remember the Saturn dealership model, where the car price was what was marked, and that was that, and if you liked it you bought it, and if you didn't, you looked for something else? That's pretty much what happened here. Worked with Beth, and she was really nice. Had a few things on the car taken care of while I signed off on this, that, and a few other things. They evaluated the truck, but couldn't give me much for it. No surprise there. I kept it, and sold it later on Craigslist. In the mean time, we wandered to the finance office, signed papers and wrote a big check, and then came back out. Didn't need financing, as I had that sorted out before I ever left home.
Pro tip: credit unions are the way to go for this sort of thing.
Drove back to my sister's place. Since I had the truck, I had to drive it, as she can't drive a manual very well. I kept my distance till we came to a big steep hill. The truck didn't do real well, and the car ran off over the hill without me. That whole displacement thing, again. That's fine, I don't need to start my ownership by rear-ending my new car with my truck. That would be bad. Got back to her place, parked the truck, and we went and collected her husband, went out for some really good pizza, and on the way back out to the car, my mom called. We told her about the car, and when we were walking toward it, we found it had something else in common with my mom's car. Her favorite feature, the puddle lights that come on when the door locks are keyed, were present on my car also. We just hadn't been able to see them in the daytime. Driving back to my sister's place, I found the power mirrors could be adjusted to not reflect the headlights behind me into my eyes. That was also very nice.
The next day, we popped the hood and found a surprise. Some clear fluid was all over the engine shield. Not sure what it was, but we cleaned it off, and it hasn't re-appeared since. Also found evidence of an oil leak, probably from the fill cap not being tightened correctly. Wiped things down, cleaned them up, and have been fine ever since. Cleaned the truck up a little, though it looked pretty good already just from the way I keep it, and snapped some photos. We posted it on Craigslist, and it sold the next weekend. I drove home in the car, with the sunroof open and the windows down pretty much the entire way through Seattle. I plugged my phone into the USB connector in the center console, and as I started to pull out, the car grabbed my music library and started playing. Didn't know it would do that, so I stopped and told my sister, while the first song played. We both thought that was cool. The first song? Midnight Blue, by Lou Gramm.
I'm not naming the car "Lou the Subaru", but the thought crossed my mind.
