Subaru has finessed the consumer preference pendulum better than any vehicle manufacturer.
Every time it appeared as if the Japanese company was out of sync with the arc, clever manipulation with minimal resources put it back in swing with what its customers wanted.
When truck-based sport utility vehicles appeared poised to devour a substantial chunk of the market, Subaru jacked up its Legacy station wagons and sedans and called them Outback SUVs for people who didn't want heavy trucks.
When the bloom faded from those machines, Subaru simply used alternative language. The Outbacks became crossover utility vehicles, which of course they had been all along.
Throughout, the company continued to champion horizontally-opposed engines and decided to equip all of its vehicles with all-wheel drive.
It made sense. Horizontally-opposed engines, also called flat or boxer engines, have their cylinders lying flat, feet to feet, on both sides of the crankshaft, instead of leaning or standing upright as in V-type or in-line engines.
The boxer makes for a tidy package with a low center of gravity. It also makes it relatively easy to engineer an all-wheel drive system from a front-drive car by running a driveshaft off the rear of the engine.
American motorists have been surrounded by boxer engines for more than half a century. For more than two decades until 1975, millions of Volkswagens, Karmann-Ghias and VW microbuses were powered by boxer engines. The Porsche 911, Boxster and Cayman, along with earlier models, also use horizontally-opposed engines.
After VW dropped the boxer in favor of in-line front engines with front-wheel drive, Subaru stepped up with its own version of the design. All models use either four- or six-cylinder boxer engines mounted up front.
Early on, Subaru developed a reputation for rugged dependability and foul weather capability. To this day, you can see 1970s-era Subaru wagons chugging around Colorado and other wintry mountain states.
Over the years, the company stuck to its formula of producing sedans and wagons, compact and mid-size, along with the occasional spinoff like the boxy Forester and larger Tribeca crossovers.
That careful, conservative approach has paid dividends. In the disastrous auto sales year of 2008, Subaru was one of only two manufacturers to register sales increases. Granted, it was only three-tenths of one percent, but other vehicle manufacturers would have been ecstatic with such a showing. The only other make with a sales increase was BMW's Mini Cooper, a niche vehicle.
The Outback and Legacy models remain at the heart of the Subaru lineup, especially the wagon models. Where other manufacturers can't seem to give wagons away, and often drop existing models, Subaru has a steady parade of customers.
The 2009 Outback wagon, which sells for more than $31,000 in a top-of-the-line version, comes across as almost a near-luxury vehicle, with quiet comfort, a quality interior, decent performance and handling, and reasonable fuel economy.
But the Subaru that has moved up in recent years is the compact Impreza, which started life as a humble sedan and wagon, but for 2009 comes in 25 different variations. They range from an $18,160 economy four-door all the way to a high-performance, rally-oriented WRX STI with a sticker price of $39,460.
Somewhere near the middle of the lineup is the tested Impreza GT, a performance model with a 224-horsepower turbocharged 2.5-liter boxer engine. It is available in either a wagon or four-door notchback sedan.
It is obviously oriented toward Subaristas who like performance but with more comfort and ease of operation. Unlike the performance WRX and WRX STI models, which come only with manual gearboxes, the GT comes only with a four-speed automatic transmission, albeit with a manual-shift mode.
The tested GT sedan is a bigger car than the previous-generation Impreza. Though still a compact as measured by government standards, it makes maximum use of interior space and its exterior dimensions make it look like a mid-size. Standing next to a Toyota Camry, for example, it looks only slightly smaller.
The interior space is particularly noticeable in the back seat, where the outboard passengers enjoy plenty of knee and head room. As with most compact and mid-size cars, however, the center-rear position is a cramped perch, not fit for human habitation.
Up front, the tested GT had comfortable and supportive cloth-covered seats with a myriad of manual adjustments. Combined with the standard tilt-and-telescoping steering wheel, it offered a decent driving position for almost any sized driver. One lapse in the design: the sun visors do not slide on their support rods and so do a poor job of blocking sunlight from the side.
The instrument panel has a swooping design that looks contemporary, but most of the surfaces, whether smooth or pebbled, are hard plastic.
With its 224-horsepower engine, the Impreza GT has more than adequate punch around town and on the highway.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service. For more columns, go to scrippsnews.com)
DriveWays with IMPREZAGT-SPECS
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