A car with knobs and buttons for HVAC controls.  Going from a 2017 Forester to a 2021 Outback, that’s the thing I miss most about the Forester.  Having HVAC in a laggy touchscreen is irritating. 

That concept. Good Lord.

Good luck finding one of these for under $50k when it arrives at dealerships.  $50k...for a Corolla.  Hard pass. 

My dad has had an Outback for 180,000 miles. He’ll put that many more on it as long as it keeps running. He loves it. I have one now too, and guess what? I love it.

As much as I loved the turbo Legacy wagon, it wouldn’t sell in the United States. Subaru barely sells the Legacy anymore. I hate it but there’s a reason why manufacturers are killing their sedans, let alone wagon forms of them. They market the Outback as a “car-like crossover” which, unfortunately, is what people want…

This is specific to the United States (not sure if it is still sold overseas) - the Mazda 6 wagon. Mazda briefly sold this here starting in 2002. The design of the 6 was remarkable for an early 2000s car - low, sporty, fast - and that translated well into a wagon. Plus you could get it with a V6 and a manual…

Yeahhhhh this is pretty much what I was expecting.

The Hammer.

An old ass Subaru with a lift kit will do just fine on most bad roads (even rocky ones) and all of them have less than 200hp. 

Agreed that it needs more power. I will say that this blue color is one of the best (if not the best) blues you can buy today. It’s stunning in person.

That’s a sexy wagon 

Lexus ES 300h. You can load it up and still be under $50k. It gets 44mpg combined. It’s also gotten much better looking and a lot less “grandpa’s couch” over the years, although the driving experience is still very “grandpa’s couch”, but it sounds like that’s what you want.

The wait list for one of these is 18 months. I know, I tried ordering one.

My sister has a 2nd gen XB like the one pictured. It’s loud at speed and has a terribly cheap interior, but has been dead reliable for 200,000 miles. Nothing but oil changes and regular maintenance. It’s also very functional and feels very peppy when you step on it. It’s an ideal car for someone living in southern…

I think I’m in the majority here in saying that this car is hideous. Butt-ugly from all angles except looking at it directly in the front. The bloated rear styling & overhang makes it look like its wearing a full diaper, and the chrome around each individual window doesn’t work. It looks like someone took sandpaper…

The Mistubishi Mirage G4. I want to like small cars, but nothing about this one is appealing in any way. It looks like a Nissan Versa before Nissan made it decent looking. Mitsubishi’s website highlights its “competitive turning radius” on the homepage, which is another way of saying “we couldn’t thing of anything to…

Chrysler had some amazing concept cars in the 90s and 2000s. The best one was this - the Chrysler ME Four-Twelve. It’s hard to believe that this was designed for the same brand that’s only alive today because of the Pacifica. The Pacifica. When you look at the ME Four-Twelve you get kind of sad at what Chrysler has…

The correct answer to this is not the VQ. The correct answer is the Chrysler trio (Patriot/Compass/Caliber) with the 2.0 L “World” Global Alliance engine and history’s worst CVT transmission. Modern CVTs are absolute masterpieces compared to the raspy droning these vehicles made under hard acceleration. They were…

I implore everyone to watch The Throttle House’s LFA video on YouTube.  It’s extremely well done.  

I got my car stuck in a snow drift in Wyoming once, about equal distance between Laramie and Cheyenne in the Vedauwoo hiking area. The road I was on was about a mile north of Interstate 80. I got stuck at 9am, decided to hike anyway, got back to the car around 3pm.