Hi,

Well my background is that I’ve had a 2.5 Outback for 9 years and been very happy wafting around in a fairly refined Auto 4x4 around Staffordshire. Life choices means a move to Edinburgh but with a lot more motorway work anticipated. Shock horreur I have even considered a diesel quashqai but in my heart Id like to stick with Subaru. I reckon an auto diesel forester would maybe do 40-43 mpg and a manual xv 48 ish mpg. I do like the convenience of an auto, but wonder if the xv would be a sharper drive.. I have driven a newish xt and thought that handled well but haven’t driven any xvs. Basically I want the best car of the two for refinement, handling, anyone here got experience of both? Ive read wildly different opinions of both models handling. Hard to believe for instance that a forester would have terrible front end control? The other car I’m considering, going for pure economy and reliability is a civic tourer 1.6 dtec. Thanks in advance, David 

Much as it goes against the grain i'd go for the Honda, and spend some of the substantial fuel savings on premium all season tyres.

sadly Subaru Diesels earned themselves a bad reputation for terminal failure and whilst the problems are supposed to be cured then Subaru stopped selling the Diesel, which sort of makes me wonder.

Honda same as Subaru, looks after the brakes by servicing them properly regularly, my daughter who has a veritable fleet of petrol Civics will be here shortly for dinner, she swears by the things and to be fair none of her cars have let her down.

Thanks Judd, I appreciate your frankness. I have the feeling that my 05 Subaru is particularly well engineered and I might not be so lucky with something 10 years younger and £8k more... Honda diesels certainly seem to be reliable.

We have a 2.0d xv manual it gets mid 40s but it’s been mapped too, it’s a great car and drive it’s got loads of room in the cab but the boot is pretty small, but again with the back seat down it’s huge again.

hasn’t really let us down yet had blocked dpf as previous own only plodded about in it so we had to sort that but been great apparently rear wheel bearings are a common part to go but that’s about it 

Thanks DjBoden, sounds encouraging.