First few trips including motorway, city, minor roads, farm tracks, unmade lanes, snow and ice!
Collected my 23 plate XV SE Premium a few weeks ago and immediately treated it to a new set of Continental All Season Contact 2. First impressions? Road holding is superb in a variety of conditions. Living in very rural mid Wales, have been able to test on muddy roads, very wet roads, through some floods, we even had two days of snow up to about 3 inches on the roads, then rutted farm tracks with frozen snow and broken ice. So far, all I can say is wow. My old car was a battered 2013 4wd Duster with full mud and snow off road tyres and that could cope with most conditions admirably. However, the XV was happy in all conditions so far with no complaints, plus it's a heck of a lot more comfortable than the old war horse! I had read about the CVT taking a bit of getting used to, the adaptive cruise being a pain, the safety stuff being a bit too safe, the acceleration being poor, the engine noisy, the infotainment system being glitchy, the music system being poor as well as many other complaints (mainly from motoring journalists). All I can say is that my initial experience is this:-
The CVT is pretty smooth and Subaru have done a good job of making it feel like a conventional auto.
Adaptive cruise is extremely controllable, all the way to standstill and pulling away again.
Safety is superb, love the little lights on the mirrors letting you know something is alongside, the fast flash when someone is coming up fast or a pedestrian is walking behind you in a car park. The front view camera is superb when parking, as is the rear parking assist camera.
Acceleration is smooth and steady, not the quickest, but that doesn't bother me. I'm not trying to win the RAC.
The engine noise is acceptable, certainly not excessive on acceleration.
No glitches with the Infotainment system so far, got a decent USB cable and the set up is easy and quick, Android Auto works well, the built in navigation is quick and easy to update to current maps, system is easily customisable, intuitive and the touch screen easy to navigate. Google Voice commands work well. DAB is decent with seamless transitions between digital and FM, essential round here as signal is sketchy.
How loud do motoring journalists want their music systems? Up into the low 20's on the control and the music is loud and crisp with no distortion. Sat at around 15 is plenty loud enough for normal listening.
Air con is fantastic, heated seats perfect, space great, boot is compact but sufficient, seats are comfortable, handling is out of this world for a high ground clearance car, all the toys work well, Eyesight system is superb. Fuel economy is around 40mpg so far, EV system around London was excellent this weekend and the thing I love the most is that I've only seen two other XV's so far! Cool Marque with a nice bit of exclusivity.
Granted these are pretty early days, but so far very impressed and pleased with my purchase and looking forward to many happy miles in the Scooby.
Off to Europe next week, so let's see how we handle autoroutes and cobbles!
