Go for the Subaru Outback, the Honda CRV is no match

Hi Baraza

I am an ardent reader of your articles and very passionate about cars.

I currently own a Toyota NZE 2005 model, which you I know you don’t like. But let’s agree that what I need is a means of transport. I would like to upgrade and my options are, but not limited to, a Subaru Outback or Honda CRV, both either year 2005 or  2006. The key factors to consider are any known manufacturer fault(s), longevity and ability to withstand abuse on rough roads, maintenance, performance and above all, reliability.

Simiyu Sabuni

Hello Sir,

Junk is junk, no matter who drives it. I am not going to go easy on a car that made two attempts on my life in the same road test (see Behind The Wheel, July 2010, where I reviewed the NZE). You are right; it is little more than a means of transport. The slightly warmed over versions (like the ZZT-powered ones with 6MTs) did try and sex up the range a little bit but still... yawn!

Now, the upgrades. The choice is split between the Subaru Outback and the Honda CRV, huh? Get the Outback. This is why:

1. Known Manufacturer Faults: None to speak of on both sides. Both Subaru and Honda build bullet-proof, idiot-proof, rock-solid engines that are ruined only by youngsters who fiddle with them with neither foresight nor forethought and then take to insulting each other on the Internet out of the resultant frustration (mostly because they know it’s their fault the engine blew).

The CRV gets one or two mentions under the subtopic “Transmission Problems” but these look like isolated cases. Stay on top of fluid changes, watch out for warped brake discs and try not to bang up the suspension too much and you’ll be fine.

2. Longevity: This could swing either way, but I’ll have to go with Subaru. These vehicles are built specifically to take a pounding, as explained below:

3. Resilience against misuse/overuse: The Outback grabs the title and runs with it. First up is the much-vaunted full-time symmetrical AWD that is definitely superior to Honda’s FWD-biased system that only shuttles urge rearwards once slip is detected at the front. This basically makes the CRV a FWD car until when it isn’t; and this in turn puts it at a slight disadvantage when the ground underfoot becomes untrustworthy.

The Outback boasts McPherson struts at the front and double wishbones with coil springs at the rear. The CRV sports a broadly similar layout to the Outback, with the exception of having a front toe control link McPherson strut assembly and reactive link setup to go with the double wishbones at the rear. This is what we call “multilink suspension” and multilink suspension loves rough roads the way cats love water.

The problem here is simple. Multilink suspension has too many joints and links (as the name so obviously states) and these provide for stress planes and points of weakness. The suspension is primarily designed for (smooth) road use and repeated pounding will shake it to pieces.

The short version is: a CRV will not handle rough roads as well as an Outback (if at all).

4. Maintenance: This depends on how badly things go in 3 above. Stick to the maintenance programme and you won’t suffer. I really can’t discuss the cost of parts any more; there is a finite amount of space and a baseline of pertinence to my writing that I will not go below.

5. Resale Value: A thorny issue everywhere. CRVs refuse to drop in price, but I believe that it is mostly because they are bought by people who have little understanding of cars beyond the fact that they need fuel and service, and therefore, assume they will sell them at the same price they bought them five years earlier; it also applies to the Toyota RAV4. I don’t understand why people still overprice them on the used-car front. That’s not how the industry works.

Stop thinking about resale value unless you are in the business of flipping* cars. Buy the car for the service it will give  you or for the enjoyment you will get out of driving it, not for the money you’ll get after palming it off on the next owner. If  you worry about resale value, then perhaps you should play the field in that rarefied supercar atmosphere where metal shifts at six-figure dollar sums and the  numbers only go upwards from there. Look up the Porsche 911R on the Internet to understand better what I have just written.

(*Flipping cars is buying them to resell later at a marked-up price. It does not mean crashing them, much as the literal meaning of that phrase actually implies having an accident).

Dear Baraza

I am fresh from driving school and would like to purchase my first car. I am considering the Mitsubishi ASX; Mitsubishi RVR, Nissan Juke, Nissan X-trail, and Honda CRV. Could you please tell me which one would be a “wise” buy?

Kate

Hi Kate,

You seem to have a penchant for crossovers, huh? In that case, let’s break it down:

Mitsubishi ASX: A new entry into the market, relatively speaking, and the result of the latest platform-sharing fad that automakers are taking advantage of to advance their capitalist agendas.

Mitsubishi RVR: I had no idea they still made these. Do they?

Nissan Juke: This might as well be called the Nissan Joke, as far as styling is concerned. Beauty might lie in the eyes of the beholder, but ugliness is universal, and this pint-sized son-of-a-Patrol is the legitimate runt of the Nissan litter.

Nissan X-Trail: A handsome brute, unlike its punier, frog-like stablemate above.

Honda CRV: the thoughtful choice of the up-and-coming suburban dweller, now with enough seating for a basketball team plus its coach and water boy.

I know right now the temptation is high to exercise your right-of-reply option and lament to my editors that you have just read an unhelpful litany of useless facts about cars you are interested in. Listen here.

I’d say buy the cheapest and the newest in the best-balanced combination of those two traits. Come up with an algorithm factoring in price, spec, year of manufacture and mileage; and use this algorithm to determine a winner according to your priorities, priorities that you conveniently failed to mention in your original query. Alternatively, go with your gut instinct: if you feel that the CRV is “talking” to you, then talk back with cash in hand. I’d still go with the best balance between newest and cheapest, though.

This is why. The crossover class has reached a point where every car is a near-perfect facsimile of the next and the only major differentiators are the badges on the grille. That is why Honda squeezed in two more seats in their latest family/lifestyle car: to try and break from the mould. Now that these cars are just exact copies of each other, is there really any point of breaking it down into which one has an extra millimetre of rear legroom or an extra cubic foot of boot space?

Whatever disparities in ability exist will never be really fully explored, be it in interior accoutrements, external dimensions or drivetrain combinations. Fuel consumption will depend on how and where you drive; buying price will depend on several factors less extenuating than the logo on the bonnet and just forget about resale value. It is a very annoying disquisition point beloved by those obsessed with money in small amounts.

Maintenance and reliability? For a first- time car owner,  I’d still say go for whatever. If you land an unbreakable and extremely reliable CRV, then lucky you. You’ll save money on repair bills and headache medication. If you get a feckless garage-queen Mitsubishi, then consider it a steeper learning curve than ingesting my weekly penmanship; you will develop more insight into the motor vehicle much faster because you will be hearing a lot from your mechanic and you will need to understand what you hear.

That said, how about I chime in with something of real use to you? The Mitsubishi ASX is the Mitsubishi RVR, after 2010. The original RVR’s USP was its sliding door, which made it very handy for passenger ingress/egress in parking slots that were not freely accommodating, but the car is getting a bit long in the tooth now (2002 is a long way back).

It also used two of the myriad iterations of Mitsubishi’s Sirius engine, which has a spotted history here in Kenya, so you might want to avoid it if you can. The ASX that followed has enjoyed some spectacular sales success globally despite its two biggest black marks: it has existed mostly unchanged for the better part of a decade now and in some ways it is a Peugeot.

The major gripes against it seem to stem from the notchy gearshift in the models equipped with a manual transmission, a situation made worse by the narrow powerband from the rather limp engine which necessitates frequent changes like a racing scene from The Fast & The Furious.

The unimpressive performance also hurts economy slightly because of the need to thrash the car to get any semblance of motion out of it; but we are talking whiffs of fuel here, don’t be thrifty to the point of being a traffic obstruction in the search for MPGs. Try and forget that you are driving the Lancer Evolution’s slovenly sibling and you will be fine. Avoid one with a diesel engine if someone tries to sell it to you as well; the DPF stories make for grim reading.

The Nissan Joke is an ASX in a badly tailored outfit, with different manufacturer’s tags. They’re both small and controversially styled, but the Joke looks smaller and divides opinions more sharply.

I can’t really say anything relevant about this car; my only experience with it was in the Californian desert five years ago trying the NISMO Juke - awesome interior, excellent to drive, would buy one if I had more money than I knew what to do with- and the Juke R (Joker?) - which really is the joker in Nissan’s deck because it is actually an R35 GTR and utterly, utterly insane. Buy one if you have a taste for the abstract or the mildly disturbing.

Easier to discuss is the X-Trail, a highly practical crossover that comes with realistic seating for five and plenty of boot space to contain the househelp when the need arises (I do not in any way condone the abuse of human rights). It, too, seems free of major niggles but if you buy a highly specced version, make sure to read the owner’s manual keenly first because the tech (and there is plenty of it inside) can get a bit confusing. It might or might not suffer wonky electrics as well, but no reason to panic.

If you are still indecisive, then just chant “Eenie Meenie Miney Mo” on pictures of the five cars, then go out and buy a Honda CRV. You can’t go wrong with a CRV.

Having car trouble? Write to [email protected] for free advice.