I’ve driven very few cars that balance ride comfort and handling nous to this degree. It resists roll with even ambitious cornering speeds and its responses are endlessly faithful, all without trading composure over the worst of a British back road.
And what’s truly extraordinary is that this car runs on its original dampers, an engine rebuild being the only major mechanical blemish in its long life.
While it never truly entertains like a hot Impreza, it’s a precise thing whose vast all-weather capability draws you in. I’m not sure that a modern Volkswagen Golf R Estate, with higher peak power and a quarter-century’s worth of tech development at its disposal, would pull out much of a gap ahead.
The interior immediately ages the experience – of course it does – but exemplary refinement and rock-star flourishes like its frameless doors would delight every time you drove it.
After that, the modern Outback can only feel like what it is: a crossover. Subaru reckons its 1995 progenitor began the trend (“the driving choice of everyone from the landed gentry to outdoors families”, reads the bumf), but it’s fair to say you’re unlikely to cross-shop this with many rivals nowadays.
You surely buy a Subaru if you want a Subaru, and thankfully at least two people every day still crave the single-minded spec of this latest Outback.
Curiously, they’re getting the car with more heft to its steering, drama to its damping and noise in its cabin of this pair. Which isn’t to say that it’s especially rough or boisterous, merely that it proves how thoroughly engineered and wide in its remit that GT-B truly was.
From the off, the Outback is much less sporting, pitching and rolling its way through corners and demanding a concerted effort to get up to speed, its lack of turbos evident and its CVT droning away under big throttle loads.
But once you’ve adapted to its power delivery, I can see this being a thoroughly easy thing to live with.