2024 Subaru Outback Touring XT Review: SUV Or Wagon, This Turbo Flagship Stands Out
- The perfect road trip car
- Turbocharging is a huge plus
- Thoughtful features sprinkled throughout
- Competitive pricing
- Starlink was a pain
- Overzealous driver assistance features
Subaru Outbacks are not luxury cars, at least historically. Sure, there are a lot of features that are nice to have, like all-wheel drive and a lot of storage space, but you can get those features on an old Toyota Sienna minivan. Practicality, however, is not a luxury feature. Leather, heated, ventilated, and seemingly infinitely adjustable seats, a huge panoramic sunroof, a powerful sound system, and charging ports everywhere are luxury features.
The 2024 Subaru Outback Touring XT has all of these features and an upgraded engine in addition to the inherent sensibility of an Outback. Is this a textbook example of putting leather on the seats and hoping it passes as a Mercedes E-Class All-Terrain wagon? Or is it something else entirely? Cars tend to prove their worth on long road trips, so that's exactly what I did with the 2024 Subaru Outback Touring XT. But it wasn't a camping trip or a jaunt out West. I took the Outback to see the solar eclipse.
How does the Touring trim stand out?
We all know what a Subaru Outback is, or at least we have an idea of what one purports to be. It's a tall station wagon with all-wheel drive and a flat-four "Boxer" engine (Subaru calls the Outback an "SUV" but, for all intents and purposes, it's a wagon). How, though, does the Touring XT model differentiate itself?
Subaru's flagship Outback trim gets you Nappa-leather trimmed upholstery, the power adjustable heated and ventilated seats I mentioned earlier, power folding mirrors for a little extra peace of mind in cramped parking spaces, Subaru's "DriverFocus Distraction Mitigation System" (more on which later), and a front view monitor. That's a pretty healthy list of features.
The most interesting specification of the Touring XT is the engine. It's the addition of a turbocharger to its trademark Boxer engine. That means 260 horsepower and 277 pound-feet of torque. 260 horses is not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but the extra muscle certainly made the driving experience a little more enjoyable.
Starlink troubles
Before I get into what I liked about the Outback–and there are many laudable aspects of the vehicle–I need to address the Subaru's flaws. Theologian Charles Spurgeon said "There are difficulties in everything except in eating pancakes." So, with the treat of the pancake breakfast that is a turbocharged station wagon, comes a number of faults. Mechanically, the CVT never gave me trouble, and 27 miles per gallon is exactly adequate, and the distinctive clatter of the hopped up engine was even at times enjoyable. I have no qualms there.
My ire is directed towards the Starlink infotainment system and the driver assistance features. Starlink got my negative attention because it outright refused to work a number of times. It never remembered my phone for Apple CarPlay and navigation, and I had to factory reset the infotainment unit a number of times. Most options to change anything were hidden behind obtuse menus and it would freeze regularly. It's not a good experience when you're driving hundreds of miles and the navigation just forgets where it is and what it's doing.
Subaru's backseat driving
The driver assistance features had the opposite problem, they worked too well. The lane assist feature in particular is very zealous in making sure you are exactly in the middle of the lane, down to the micron. It's like Subaru was hovering over my shoulder the entire journey, making comments on how I drive. The DriverFocus feature, intended to make sure you're looking at the road, did not seem to like me at all, beeping and blinking the entire time, and reminding me to look at the road even though I'd had my head in the same spot for several hours.
Even when I did move my head, just to check my mirrors or glance at an interesting landmark, the Outback would get mad and intervene. Please let me have fun, Subaru. I'm not going to crash the car or sideswipe anyone, and I generally look at the road while driving. I promise.
A handsome wagon
The interior, on the other hand, scores huge points for me. It's not quite BMW SUV level or a Mercedes-Maybach, but it's certainly very nice and well done. Subaru definitely put effort into the inside. It even has a CD player. Remember those? One feature I got a kick out of was the ability to lock the car from the electronic rear hatch. No one likes fumbling for keys with a handful of groceries and Subaru eliminated that small annoyance. If anyone from Subaru ends up reading this, I want to make sure the engineer who came up with that feature gets thanked.
Alex Hevesy/SlashGear
The paint color too–in this case "Dark Mahogany Pearl"–deserves some praise. It's a little hard to make a brownish-red station wagon look great and yet Subaru pulled it off. It's a handsome looking car. The black leather, paired with interesting paint color made for a good look, even with the plastic cladding.
The ultimate road trip car
It was a roughly five and a half hour drive to Erie, Pennsylvania and I never felt fatigued while behind the wheel of the Soobie. It's perfectly suited for long, monotonous drives and its Harmon Kardon sound system made the ride a little more enjoyable (when Starlink decided to work). The rear storage space was more than enough to tote all of the camera equipment and luggage I was carrying to observe the eclipse.
Where the Outback excels is road trips, it's big enough to feel roomy and spacious enough on the inside to hold a lot of stuff, yet it's narrow and lithe enough to get in and out of gas station parking and rest stop parking lots without any hassle. The same can't be said about other family road trip kings like a 2025 Chevy Suburban or Dodge Durango. The Subaru is packaged very efficiently. Technical foibles aside, I would welcome any long distance trip with the Subaru Outback Touring XT, it's more than ready for the job.
2024 Subaru Outback Verdict
Now there's the question of price: just by reading "Touring" and "XT," you already know it's a premium over the base Subaru Outback's very reasonable $28,985. The only option in the Outback I had was $141 floor liners. It retails for $44,231 including the destination charge. As a Subaru, that seems expensive. It's over $15,000 more than a base Outback. But as a pseudo-luxury station wagon, that's a pretty phenomenal deal. Volvo's V60 Cross Country wagon starts at $50,300 and the starting trim has a full 13 horsepower less than the Outback. The Mercedes-Benz E-Class Estate isn't even in the same universe, with a starting price $71,250.
Subaru, as a brand, doesn't ostensibly compete with Mercedes and Volvo, but if you want an all-wheel drive wagon with leather seats, the Outback might just be the way to go. Subaru cooked up something special with the Outback Touring XT. Not many automakers still offer drivetrain choices for more luxurious trims anymore, but it warms my heart that Subaru still offers a turbo if you want. It sets the higher trims apart and justifies the cost ever so slightly more. While Starlink and the Outback's backseat driving were nothing short of annoying, the rest of Subaru's attempt at a luxury car was so well executed that the good certainly outweighs the bad.