Category: Cars

2026 Subaru Outback Touring XT vs. Toyota Crown Signia Limited: New ways to get around.

This week: Subaru Outback

Price: $49,445 as tested

What others are saying: “Highs: Spacious rear seat and cargo area, decent off-road capability, friendly dashboard controls. Lows: Base engine provides unhurried acceleration, handling is not engaging, no longer looks like a wagon,” says Car and Driver.

What Subaru is saying: “Love never looked so good.”

Reality: Most of the best features are kept, but then so are most of the not-so-best.

What’s new: It’s a whole new redesign for the Outback. Beyond the new face up front, it gets a boxier profile and flatter roof for more passenger and cargo space.

The Outback and brother Forester tend to bring a feeling of trustworthiness to every drive, somewhere in the putt-putt engine, just-right handling, and interior design. Will the redesign upset that balance?

Competition: In addition to the Crown Signia, competitors include an eclectic mix of crossovers: Chevrolet Blazer, Honda Passport, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Nissan Murano, Mazda CX-70, and Volkswagen Atlas.

Up to speed: The Outback as tested features a turbocharged version of the 2.4-liter Boxer four-cylinder engine, making 260 horses. It gets the vehicle to 60 mph in 6.2 seconds, according to Car and Driver. The standard 2.5-liter four-cylinder creates 180 horsepower and gets there in 8.8 seconds, Car and Driver estimates.

A morning in the 20s was accompanied by some occasional hesitation — from the Subaru, not just Mr. Driver’s Seat — when pulling out and while in motion.

Shiftless: The Outback continues to transfer the power to the road with a continuously variable transmission. There’s no real excitement, but it just adds to the feeling of trustworthy canine companion somehow.

The shifter is the old-fashioned handle style. Paddle controls on the steering wheel and a manual mode offer the illusion of control.

On the road: The Outback visited the Sturgis household during frigid temperatures and an unusual midwinter snowpack. I wasn’t driving through the snow, which would have been a very Subaru-worthy test indeed. Unfortunately, I faced icy roads only when it got dark, so I never had the chance to put it to a real test. Still, the SUV did just fine, hugging the curves and making me confident that it would follow my steering inputs quickly.

I never found any drive modes and didn’t really miss them, but there is a snow mode.

Driver’s Seat: The interior is all new as well, although it’s not radically different from Outbacks of yore.

The seats in the Outback were quite comfortable and roomy — and luxurious. The adjustments are handled on the door, not my favorite setup.

The Outback handles the cold with some real bun burners for seat heaters. I could hardly keep it set to 2, while the Lovely Mrs. Passenger Seat relished 3.

Friends and stuff: Rear seat passengers should be pleased with their accommodations. There’s tons of legroom, foot room, and headroom. The seat is almost as supple and inviting as the front.

Cargo space is 34.6 or 80.5 cubic feet, depending on the seat origami.

Play some tunes: Subaru literature advertises a 12.1-inch infotainment screen, but it sure looks larger than that. It’s also attractive and easy to operate, with a dial for volume and button icons that are easily visible and get you around the functions. And it’s also not the vertical screen of yore.

Sound from the Subaru Multimedia system is OK, about a B+, maaaaybe an A-. It seemed to miss a lot of the parts of songs I know to look for.

Keeping warm and cool: Dials control the temperature and buttons handle everything else. There’s a display that tells you what’s going on without taking over the main screen.

Again, those seat heaters. Wow.

Fuel economy: I averaged about 19 mpg on side roads until I took it out on the highways and got close to 21. Subarus can be thirsty, and this Outback is less station wagon and more SUV than ever.

I didn’t have it out too much, though, so there may be some more room for improvement.

Where it’s built: Gunma, Japan

How it’s built: The Outback gets a 3 out of 5 for reliability from Consumer Reports.

In the end: My love for the Outback has grown over the years, especially the Wilderness model. This one offers much the same experience. The turbo adds a lot of fun, but also drinks a lot of fuel.

Next week: See how the Crown Signia Hybrid compares.

2026 Infiniti QX60 Sport AWD: New stuff is better, right?

Price: $65,750 as tested.

What others are saying: “Pros: Classy, high-feature interior, well utilized screens, best-in-class third-row accessibility. Cons: Not a Sporting bone in this body; VC-Turbo drivability still disappoints; poor lane keep, auto stop/start systems,” says Motor Trend.

What Infiniti is saying: “Designed with distinction — inside and out.”

Reality: Sometimes new stuff is just new.

What’s new: The QX60 is redesigned for 2026, adding mass and presence in its new look, as Infiniti touts. (Never do cars redesigned for the American market get more svelte or subtle.) The vehicle also adds more smart tech.

The Sport grade tested is also new for 2026, and it jazzes up inside and out.

The VC-Turbo four-cylinder replaced the old V-6 in 2025, and there’s a lot to say about that power plant below.

Competition: Acura MDX, Audi Q7, BMW X7, Cadillac Escalade, Cadillac XT6, Land Rover Range Rover, Lexus GX, Lexus TX, and Volvo XC90.

Up to speed: I can be as focused as the next car guy on 0-60 times, but years of testing have proven time and again that there’s so much more. The 0-60 time of 6.9 seconds, according Motor Trend, is respectable among premium three-row SUVs.

But if I stopped here, you’d being missing a lot.

This is the QX60’s second year featuring 268-horsepower VC-Turbo 2-liter four-cylinder engine name, which sounds pretty cool in a Marvin Martian kind of way. Much like the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator!, though, this VC-Turbo is still in beta testing.

Each standing start revealed the QX60 had more hesitation than Mr. Driver’s Seat trying to explain a dent on a test vehicle. I’d press the accelerator and for easily a second, the QX60 would hem and haw. Frightening.

The denouement came while turning left from a parking lot onto a 50-mph stretch of U.S. 322. Even in Sport mode, I was sweating getting to 50 mph quickly enough, let alone 60.

I had much better success with a 3.5-liter V-6 in a 2022 QX60, although I’m trusting that “some hesitation” back then was far better than this time around.

Good to go: Not everything about the drive was terrible. On the first day behind the wheel, I found the QX60 to feel somewhat sporty and fun. It seemed to have a bit of a kick to it, almost Jeep Wranglerlike in its roughness. But that got old really fast, especially in light of the unpredictable accelerator.

Shifty: The 9-speed automatic transmission operated seamlessly while driving, but it also revealed one weird habit while getting in gear: It rolled back quite a bit. In fact, its rolling could almost match clutch driving. This seemed more prominent in Sport mode. Presumably there’s an auto hold button I could have engaged, but I haven’t needed to in 40 years of driving.

The shifter is modeled on Lexus’ long-ago handle, a square top that pulls back or pushes forward depending on where you want to go.

If you want to shift your own gears, though, it’s paddle city for you.

On the road: The handling of the QX60 never got me excited. Curves and turns came and went, and I sought out enjoyment, but was left disappointed. At least the vehicle felt small and athletic for a three-row SUV.

Sport mode, though, was a rough one on the highways; any road seams of note set the QX60 to shaking.

Friends and stuff: The second row provides comfortable enough captains’ chairs, with decent space overall.

But the third row is only for youngsters. Getting back there is hard, clambering past the second-row seats. Foot room in the rear is pitiful, even with the middle row scooched up a bit. I had to twist my size 12s with my hand to turn them into place. Finally, the door is narrow, and hopping out feels as death-defying as Lindsey Vonn’s last ride.

Cargo space is 14.5/41.6/75.4 cubic feet, depending on the ups and downs.

Driver’s Seat: The cockpit felt very Nissan-esque, with the usual controls and gauges found on the lesser make’s models. Granted, Nissans do generally feel more luxurious than they have a right to, but we’re paying for Infiniti luxury here.

The seat was comfortable enough but no oohs and aah were emitted during test week.

Play some tunes: Sound from the system was disappointing for the model level, about a B.

A dial for volume and another for tuning make the system a little easier to control than many nowadays. The 12.3-inch touchscreen is par for the vehicle class.

Keeping warm and cool: An ebony touchpad has Audi-style haptics, where you have to press hard enough to register your feelings. So it’s good for not accidentally setting off unwanted features as you slide around the pad, but in the Infiniti there’s no feel, so you still have to look.

Fuel economy: The QX60 averaged just under 21 mpg.

Where it’s built: Smyrna, Tenn.

How it’s built: Consumer Reports had no guess for the new model’s reliability, but 2025’s was a 4 out of 5.

In the end: Most of the vehicles in the competition list lack space in the rear, but the QX60 is exceptionally difficult.

But if the engine hesitation was not just a test-model problem, I’d write it off. I’m surprised reading how much I liked the Lexus GX, so I’d probably start there.