Anyhow, the drive home was going to be the telling point. I live up in the hills, out of Adelaide. The freeway from the city up is 10 kms - 100 kms/hr - of constant gradient (17% I think), and it's a killer for automatics. If you don't lock them in a lower gear they hunt up and down. The 4 speed in the Forester hates it.
The CVT is brilliant! Plonk it in D and away it goes, no hunting, no shifting, no lurching between gears! Whether it's going uphill, downhill or just around town. Luvverly! Pickup seemed slightly better than the Forrie, a bit quicker response from the throttle (electric throttle, I suppose?).
The electric steering feels a bit different to the hydraulic, slightly touchier, maybe, but it's early days yet to judge it. It certainly works well, but just feels different.
Brakes work well enough, of course, but they seem strangely "dead" compared to the Forrie (admittedly, I've just fitted new pads to it, so they probably have different material to the XV). Nevertheless, they don't seem to have the initial bite that the Forrie has.
Suspension feels a bit firm, but should soften a little as it loosens up.
In general, it's a very nice car and feels very classy!:D
Downside? The internal storage pockets, strangely enough. The door pockets are smaller than the Forrie (can't even fit a street directory in) - although each one has a cupholder in it
, and the glovebox is smaller. The Forrie has a strap on the spare wheel cover that lets you clip the cover up out of the way - the XV has nothing like that, you lift up the cover and have to juggle holding it up while fiddling around with the spare wheel. Only a little thing, perhaps, but it's the little things that tend to annoy me.Speaking of which, I bought the Subaru Cross Bars for the roof rails (I've always had crossbars on all my cars, very useful things). I decided on the genuine parts, figuring they would be designed specifically for the car. These are Thule bars, so pretty good quality. Well, after stuffing around with them for a couple of hours I came to the conclusion that the clamps were the wrong ones, as no way would the inner clamp sit flat to the side of the rail as I tightened it up. I took them back and spoke to the spares guy, who confirmed it was the correct part number. Hmmm. He agreed that it didn't look right, but said they'd fitted about 30 of these and no-one had said anything before. I then looked at a display Forester that had the same rail/bar setup and yep, the inner clamp stuck out at a funny angle. He said he will pass it on to Head Office, as he agreed that, considering Subaru genuine accessories are supposed to be designed to fit the particular model, it didn't look the best. I said in my opinion it looked cheap and nasty!
Be interesting to see what happens.
! Suits me, though, I have lots of settings to play with! Amongst other things you can set reminders for the next service (based on time and/or distance) - oil, filter, next service itself and tyres (!). This last one has me a bit perplexed. However, the beauty of this system is that it's completely at the control of the owner, you can set whatever you like or turn it off completely. Which is good, I hate those things where you have to go to the dealer to have them reset.
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