Confession #59: The SUV-sedan is the strangest combination that won't go away

Most wagon fans have come to terms as much as possible with jacked-up wagons, if only as a way of keeping the breed alive somehow. With successes like the Subaru Outback, you can't really argue with it – and it's about all of the SUV many, many people need.

But the offshoot of this wagon-with-cladding trend is the curious sedan-with-cladding, the likes of which haven't been seen since 2007. Thanks to Volvo and the S60 Cross Country, it's back and as charmingly confusing as ever.

Confession #52: It should be easy to make a Subaru Outback

2015 Subaru Outback (Photo: Subaru)

The Subaru Outback is an important vehicle, and a surprising one. It has succeeded where the AMC Eagle and Matra Rancho failed. It's a wagon masquerading as an SUV that people actually take seriously.

It didn't happen overnight, but in about 20 years the Outback has gone from a niche vehicle to being Subaru's second-best seller and catapulting the brand itself from a quirky bit player in the US to a less quirky, significant player in the US. Subaru keeps having its "best month ever" for US sales they could really find a new way to say that.

But it's partly due to the Outback, a reasonably simple concept. So why can't anyone else make a serious rival?

Confession #42: If others' first impressions are anything to go on, some things are still worth the wait

2013 Subaru BRZ (AutoViva photo)

I swear, I'm not turning into some hyper-critic of automotive journalists. I may have just railed on Consumer Reports and their apparent lack of any understanding of impulse buying in their reviews, but I will largely save media criticism for my other blog.

This isn't so much criticism as an observation. Perhaps the most drawn-out coverage among auto journalists in recent memory is the Toyota-Subaru sports coupe collaboration, just now bearing fruit as the Subaru BRZ, Scion FR-S and its Toyota-branded equivalent. A lot of acronyms, but really one rear-wheel drive, compact sports coupe with a boxer four-pot and aimed at sports car purists who value great handling characteristics over modern electronic driver intervention and a heavily boosted engine. What's more, this speaks to the core of an auto journalist's heart. These are cars that just aren't as common on auto show stands, things with four cylinders, three pedals and a price that begins with a 2. I'm starting to picture hoards of drivers slobbering like Labradors at the press launch. 

Confession #27: Maxed-out on Minis

2002 Mini Cooper (BMW Group photo)

A disclaimer: I’ve loved the new Mini since I was a boy. I remember being a 10-year-old, rushing to my mailbox and pulling out an Automobile Magazine with a green, then-new Mini Cooper on the cover. It was love from day one.

Anytime a new one passed me on the freeway I started drooling. Any chance I got I took a ride in one. When my friend one day let my drive his Cooper S, I literally leapt at the chance – and nearly got a speeding ticket in the process. I might have been able to swing getting one as my first car – instead of the Saab I love/hate so dearly – had the insurance rates not nearly sent my mother into a panic attack. How do parents give their 16-year-old boys brand-new Subaru WRXs?

Confession #26: Get in and go for a drive

California State Highway 1 near Bixby Creek Bridge,
Big Sur, Calif. (Google Earth image) 

Easily one of my favorite things about driving is finding a good road without a lot of traffic, on a clear day with nothing else on your mind.

Trust me, it’s intoxicating.

Even though I lean towards the environmentalist perspective that we should all drive more economically and buy smaller, more appropriately sized cars, I don’t tell people it’s partially because we should be saving fuel for drives that aren’t to anywhere or really for anything other than the undiluted thrill of driving.

Finding a good road for this is a never-ending quest. Like a tough addiction, you can be happy with a favorite stretch of pavement for a while, until it becomes too familiar. Then you go out looking for something stronger, more thrilling. It could eventually consume you. Be careful.

The car for the job really matters. It has to be engaging on some level, meaning the Hertz special Ford Fusion isn’t a good fit. But get something that’s only powerful and not an able handler, and you’re again asking for trouble.

Confession #18: Small Cars Part 2 – Is this a country for super-small SUV?

2011 Mini Cooper S All4 Countryman
(Mini USA photo)

I walked past a Mini Countryman the other day. It was a strange sight in a snow-covered parking lot in Boston, mostly filled by weather-beaten small domestics, Saabs, Subarus, Volvos, and the occasional Audi A5 or Q5 that has somehow managed to stay cleaner than everything else.

There are even some standard Minis parked there and even then, the Countryman doesn’t blend in quite right, and not because this example looked pristine under the dim sunlight of a freezing January afternoon. It’s not small like a Mini or even another small hatch. But compared to the muddy Ford Explorer planted a few spaces away, it’s miniscule, no pun intended.

2010 Volkswagen Golf 3-door
(Volkswagen photo)

What never quite clicked with the Countryman and me was this: You buy a Mini because it’s compact, and you buy a small SUV/crossover either because it’s smaller than a big one or it’s all you can afford.

The Countryman is small. But at more than four meters (or 13 feet) long, it’s about the length of a Volkswagen Golf. And it’s at least 12 inches longer than the normal Mini, so it’s firmly into the “normal size” of a modern car.

Is it the normal length of an SUV? Hardly.

Confession #13: I'm still an outsider

I’ve always liked the show “Mad Men” but I’ve been absolutely hooked this time around.

And because I’m an oddball, my favorite character really isn’t Don Draper (sober or not), but the often-arrogant and frequently manic Pete Campbell.

So it was immensely disappointing to read a New York Times column about Vincent Kartheiser, who plays Campbell on the show.

He’s not at all the WASP-ish immaculately trimmed New Yorker, but a hipster from Hollywood.

And bizarrely for a Los Angeles resident, he doesn’t have a car. Instead, he relies on the city’s ludicrous public transit system. God, he’s such a hipster.

Karthesier brings up an important point though. He refers to statistics suggesting Generation Y children, the “Trophy Kids,” – those born roughly between the 1980s and mid-1990s – no longer view cars as a status symbol.

“They look at them as pollutants,” Kartheiser told the Times. Ouch.

He’s right, especially in California. I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t traffic in LA. There really isn’t a pocket of the 101 that doesn’t get socked in with traffic during most weeknights and weekends.

Most people my age don’t really care what car they drive, or know much about the one they do. Which probably explains why most of them drive either a Toyota Camry or a BMW 3-series, the automotive equivalent of a white T-shirt.

They don’t care about their car as long as it doesn’t break down or cost a fortune to gas up.

And living in a city like Boston now, the few people who do have a car view it as more of a hindrance. Something that needs to be moved every Wednesday morning for street sweeping, or something like that.

I could list a thousand reasons why the Trophy Kids don’t like cars, but I won’t. I’ll blame the Internet, partly because I’m petty.

But frankly I’ve grown used to not having a car. If I had one in Boston, I’d probably go insane. The streets don’t make any sense and the parking situation is painful.

So while a car isn’t the definitive status symbol for Americans it used to be, I’d argue it’s still significant. Just like where you live or what clothes you wear, it does say something about you.

There are lots of people like Kartheiser. I know this because there are places like West Hollywood and Silver Lake, for example.

I don’t have as much antipathy towards public transportation, mostly because in cities like Boston and New York, it actually works. In LA, not quite as well.

At least Kartheiser says he’s getting a car. For him? Probably a beat-to-death 1990s Subaru wagon. It'll continue to look scruffy for years but never completely fall apart. On the downside, he'd likely lose it on a Venice street.