![]() The Outback cuts a traditional wagon profile without the stubby dinner-roll proportions of most contemporary compact- or mid-sized SUVs. But because station wagons (or sport wagons, as we prefer to call them), are out of fashion compared to crossover-utes, Subaru has for years, given the Outback a small lift, fitted SUV tires and added a bit of machismo to the Outback. This doesn’t mean it’s tired or incapable – quite the contrary – instead, the years of wisdom collected by Subaru’s engineers have helped hone a very good machine into an excellent, refined, do-everything vehicle. Since automotive lifecycles typically run on dog years, Subaru’s popular crossover is pretty much a senior citizen now. The current generation Outback has been around for several years now with modest updates along the way. ![]() So, this year, I learned from past mistakes and in what can only be described as an act of overcompensation, I scheduled a 2019 Subaru Outback 3.6R Premier for our journey. As Murphy’s Law dictates, we ended up with a green Christmas and virtually no snow in Southern Ontario, so we drove north, venturing into the Kawartha region where we did find snow, and ice. Unsurprisingly, our mid-sized chariot did what it Subarus do best: get people and cargo safely to their destination, no matter the conditions. It was all good fun until I needed to pack the car with a family’s worth of luggage, Christmas gifts and people, to zig-zag around the province for a series of obligatory holiday visits, all conducted during a snow storm. After getting properly stuck on an unplowed suburban street, my oh-so-helpful family pointed out that either one of our personal Subarus parked at home would’ve made a much better choice for our Yuletide travels, and they were absolutely right. It was a coveted machine from a premium brand that harkened back to an era of purer driving cars this one with rear-wheel-drive and a proper manual transmission. Those little oops moments give us the opportunity to gain nuggets of wisdom, and hopefully, not make the same mistakes again. Last year for the Christmas holiday break, my scheduled ride was a compact, sporty two-door coupe.
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