Originally Posted By: edyvw
Had rental SF recently. I was appalled by plastic inside. I know Hyundai is not VW, but for the love of god.
Steering feel? What feel?
Subaru? Just one word: CVT!!! Drove that attempt of an transmission once and honestly, firing squad is easy escape for the guy who invented that.
Originally Posted By: edyvw
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: edyvw
It is a CVT. You cannot make a pie from s...!
So you've never heard of s... pie?
In all seriousness though, what year was the Subaru that you drove? Apparently this latest one has a pretty good behaving CVT, from all that I've read. Personally, I'd still go for a manual trans if that were an option, which it is not on the XT trim.
It was 2015. Friend car, he knows I know stuff about cars so wanted me to try. Just cannot stand any CVT transmission.
Of course manual would be better.
But Subaru is becoming more like Toyota, with soccer moms in mind.
Did you drive the XT with CVT or the 2.5i? They're two completely different animals, so your experience with the latter has no real bearing on the OP's request...
In the XT, at moderate throttle, the CVT will rev the engine to just below 3k RPM at zero boost/vacuum, drop it down 500 RPM at 6-8psig boost, and hang out right there through the entire acceleration. Even at a more aggressive acceleration, the RPM stays much lower than an N/A engine's CVT and with ~14+ psig of boost, it doesn't need to scream. I actually perceive it to perform better at lower RPM, high boost than when you mash the pedal and send the RPM screaming up, which I think is more for the experience of high RPM for the driver than what is technically the highest performance.
With that said, I didn't really mind the 2.5i CVT (compared to other CVT's) in the Impreza and Outback I test drove; however, I did dislike them enough to never want to own one. I expected the XT to be similar, and to dislike the test drive, but I was surprised at how good it was.
Finally, I disliked MT vehicles when I was young (prior to 16 and just up to) because all I'd driven up to the point where I was able to drive on my own was an old Hyster fork lift and my gramma's Ranger, neither of which was "fun" to drive. I relearned how to drive on an even older Sunfire(circa 1980's) that had no power steering, but was somehow a really fun car to drive. I refined my MT skills even further with my first new car, a 2005 Focus ST, which was really fun to drive. I've had a few more MT cars since then, so now I highly prefer a MT.
My point, is that I hated MT in the beginning, until I A) learned to drive them and B) became proficient and learned how to enjoy them. A CVT is alien at first, but quickly grows on you. Like I've said, I've driven a couple or so rental CVT's and transitioned my opinion from an absolute hatred of them to...well, not disliking them. With the XT, I like it a lot. If the XT was offered with a MT (it's not; it's only offered with the CVT,) I would have had to think long and hard about which to get. The FXT is fun (for a CUV) and fast (for a CUV or subcompact turbo,) but I'm not sure how much more fun a MT would have been. It for sure would have been MUCH slower.
