Subaru Outback test drive since 2009

Audi A4 Allroad vs Subaru Outback: Stalkers

We find out why the Audi A4 Allroad frowns from the smell of off -road, and Subaru Outback feels uncomfortable at social parties.
A strange choice for comparison, right? And all because when this article comes out, dealers will already begin to form orders for new outback. And the current one has been on the market since 2003, having experienced one single restyling, will leave the stage, simultaneously taking with it the main off-road chip in the form of a demultipliter, which is placed with a manual box. This does not mean at all that Outback will become a road vegetable capable of getting over only through compensation joints on the asphalt, and overcoming the vapigy puddles at the entrance. It’s just that the driver will have less freedom of action, let for the most part only psychologically. It seems that Subaru simply played played out in the ralists in life, along the way, by the way, having left the WRC championship, and began the assault on the all-wheel drive luxury universal segment. The segment, which has been ranging on Audi Allroad for many years.
But we deliberately did not wait for the new Subaru outback to compare it with the off -road version of A4. We are interested not to remember with a smart mine, which the Japanese refused in the pursuit of the respectability of the German mud, and to experience it in business. To test, still there is an opportunity, and the old outburst are leaving the assembly line in the city of Yajima, which is 150 km from Tokyo. And the Audi A4 Allroad will act as a certain destination for the ideas of Subaru engineers and marketers: after all, the new Outback will be more expensive than the previous one by about 15%, thereby catching up with the Ingolstad competitor. Ace in the sleeve, in the form of the difference in price by the price, is thrown into the urn.
Did you strive for this? Get it, and we will try to figure out if the most affordable OldBack is worse than a new A4 one third of a million rubles.
The theater begins with a hanger, an army with a littered session, and a car with a driver's door. Here it is, the difference in the approach: behind a massive sash of audi, slapping with a juicy chop, a leather-plastic paradise framed by wooden inserts is hidden. Outside the door, Subaru, that which is still without a frame, is much more commonplace: a regular finish, a regular dark palette of colors. The quality is also ordinary, without take -off and failures, although you are not easy to find fault with fitting panels made of harsh plastic.
The adjustments of the chair are enough in both machines, since the base allows, but the tall driver will be more comfortable behind the German drill there the range of settings of the steering column simply circles his head.
The A4 ALLROAD functionality study is like studying the iPhone after many years of use of a wired disk phone. At first, much of this is perceived as a show -off, an attempt to justify himself for an immodest price tag, but you should drop deeper, and you understand everything damn logical. Information is duplicated on two screens, access to the main functions of the service, music, navigation - is carried out by a separate key on a thick average tunnel. But the first thing that catches your eye when you transplant to Outback how better the devices are read in A4! The stylish, but already managing to become obsolete, the Japanese salon is boring, and does not pull on premium. Fantasy is not the same! Our car was equipped with a foreign navigator implanted into the upper part of the console, but even with it the panel looked kutz.
The Subaru hydrotransformer machine has five steps if it is aggregated with a 3.0 liter engine, and only four, if under the hood of Outback, an opposite of 2.5 liters. After a 7-speed DSG on the Audi, the box seems atavism, but on moderate off-road it is still preferable, since it is less prone to overheating.
As for the ALLROD route shoots to the first hundred in 6.9 seconds, in the area of \u200b\u200b3,500 5,000 revolutions powerfully pressing the driver in the back of the seat. The pre-sequentic box knows how to switch to 3 (!) Passing down in the Kik-Dawn mode for tenths, making any response to gas with lightning and predicted. Audi is measured, but powerful and tasty, which serves as a real driver of driver's emotions.
Outback, on the contrary, is thoughtful and heavy in reactions, although Audi is seconded to about 200 kg. A sharp pressure on the gas provides an almost tangible pendal in the transmission, but the exciting growth of torque does not happen: there is no way without a turbine. When accelerating, Subaru is inferior to the Ingolstadt heavyweight exactly four seconds, but you can’t call the slow for the universal, it simply accelerates on its atmospheric 173 hp, and does not provoke the go faster than the ancient box can allow
I also want to hesitate to hesitate at the wheel of outbuke because of the not the most tenacious armchairs, which with a good profile is too soft. Audi chairs, to which you can also order an optional second -board, are ergonomically flawless, and hold the driver much tougher. In addition, on long trips, such buckets will protect the back and other important organs from flowing.
    
But nervous stabilization on Audi after a subtile-indenting system on Subaru sounds a loud slap in the face of a driver’s pride. Yes, it can be strangled by pressing the key on the console, but to let the driver go completely no! Where in the mud porridge Outback, I famously went into the skid when opening the throttle, AlloD began to stake. Drive? To brake? No, gas, gas! The rapid 1650-kilogram carcass buzzes with a strangled motor, and sharply reducing the speed, it hardly begins to turn around with 17-inch wheels shod in the road Danlop. Yes, Differential Torsen, which the car shares with the Q5 crossover, distributes the moment in the ratio of 4: 6 in favor of the rear wheels and is good for complete control of the car in a speedy turn, but the electronics are too retreating and uncompromisingly intervened in the operation of the motor and brakes.
But sometimes off -roads are much more important than the work of the suspension. The complex multi -link Audi, installed both in front and behind, is tuned quite rigidly, but it gives out the roots of the road chassis with the head: on the asphalt those 180 mm separating the crankcase from the roadway, do not feel. The rolls in corners are minimal, but on a broken coating, a comfortable component is sharply lost, although the average bumps of the suspension continues to extinguish with the diligence of a five-grader gymnasium.
Subaru on the road behaves tougher. And much. If under the wheels of the car are earthen bumps, bumps and other horrors for checking the energy intensity of suspensions, you can simply forget about a comfortable component. But in order to break through a powerful suspension, you need to have a clear desire to destroy the entire car. In addition, a stock of 200 mm to the ground will give odds to other crossovers. And with the stabilization disconnected, to row the wheels in the mud in the Japanese, it turns out confidently and assertively, which is facilitated by the branded system of all -wheel drive with an equal distribution of torque through the axes. But the steering wheel in the mud is heavy, and Subaru does not like to steer quickly, not his element.
The complex and, again, the optional steering mechanism A4, where both the hydro- and the electric power, has four pre-installations, including individual settings. But in any case, the response to the turn of the steering wheel is simply lightning. And if, on a detrimental to the tires of the soil, the steering wheel of Subaru was bitten with sharp rebuilding, then the performance of the A4 mechanism was enough for much more steep maneuvers.
The adjustment of the steering of Audi with the head issues how the manufacturer recommends driving a car. Fast! Powerfully, without large rolls and accurately, as on rails, A4 Allroad is ready to rebuild into the very gap in the stream. Where the Outback driver will pretend whether the flipper of the box for a quick jerk is enough, the Audi pilot simply presses on the gas. And for sure it turns out to be the head of the Peleton.
But in Subaru Outback it is not scary to climb into the dirty shoes black plastic along the bottom of the front panel is much more practical than a soft, light pile in the German universal. Moreover, the owners of the used Olroud are already talking about this - the dark plastic details of the interior of the German station wagon are not too long for abrasion, and in three or four years of operation they lose their form. But if you do not leave smooth roads, you can never know about it
The test ended, and the cars, bypassing the sink, moved their roads: Subaru to the parking lot of the car dealership, and Audi for the night at my house. How crossed by passers -by and motorists in traffic jams! At the wheel of a dirty Allroad, I literally hid from the index fingers directed in a crop, feeling like an office plankton of the middle link, which, in spite of everyone, plunged his glamorous station wagon into a deep puddle.
Audi is not perceived as a conqueror of the elements. You go to the swamp, and as if you are refueling the trouser of an expensive costume in a kirsy boot. I was awkward, huh? That’s why these views, and fingers, and a rapid pulse after each bump: did the bumper not hurt? Protection intact? Thresholds in place? But when there are no equal Audi among medium -dimensional universals under the wheels.
Subaru is more honest. The plastic body kit, which flies (is required, is deformed) from the first contact with the stone she does not have any more stone at all, and a set of functionality, even with an ancient automatic transmission, is enough for pokatushka and more serious off -road tasks. Yes, Outbek outside the road behaves more aggressive, but at the same time he is more understandable to the driver who is used to relying more on himself than on electronics. For the most advanced there is a hand gearbox with a handout, for the most hasty 3.0 liter, 245-horsepower engine. And a powerful, impenetrable, indestructible suspension, which can withstand a lot.
And I admit - if at the wheel of a new outback at the sight of a rural road spread after the rain, I will twist me the same way as it was in Olroud, this will not be the best day in my life.
 
Author: Alexander Mikhailov
Photo: Margarita Shchelgacheva, Roman Ostanin
 
 
 

Source: Wheel magazine [October 2009]