2008 Subaru Tribeca

>> Huh, no Holsteins. The Tribeca used to have that nasty dumb looking cowcatcher front end. Subaru has clearly gotten the message on that. Let's see what they did inside with the tech. [ Music ] Here's [inaudible] our vehicle is nav equipped as an optional feature. It is a touch screen, but touch screen for apes because no human I know has the right arm length proportion once your legs are set right to reach that thing. I mean, you've got to be way up there. Still moving, still moving, okay. All the way up where I can't possibly drive. I can almost reach the screen. This makes no sense to me. You do have a relatively sketchy resolution there too. That's a little bit coarse for this day and age. So I don't give this one a great look and feel rating. To enter a destination, you do have very clear I think navigation between the menus here. To get to an address entry screen, that's very clear and simple to me. I mean I don't find that to be at all ambiguous. Here's an interesting feature, one that's only half-baked. This emergency services button. It shows that the vehicle knows where you are and then you can say I need to get to let's say a police station. I've got an emergency. But it seems to do a simplistic search. It pulls up police department management center, police department planning department. That's not where you want to go when you've got a problem. So this needs to be thought out a little better. Now, back here in the rear seat of our Tribeca we have the rear seat entertainment system optional as I mentioned in a couple of ways. A good-sized screen there. That's a 9-inch LCD. Of course it's a centrally mounted one so when it's down it's going to obstruct the view of the driver in the rearview mirror. I've never liked that. But it's less expensive than dual headrest mounts. And of course your slot, the drive up here for the DVD system is up in the ceiling, very nice and flush at least when it's closed. You also have wireless headphones. Two pair come with it. The usual obligatory wireless remote, no buttons up here to speak of. And way back there in the third row, I can just barely seen, though not reach, a set of AV inputs. I don't know why carmakers put them back there. Those are the least occupied seats in the whole house. No one's ever going to be sitting there, certainly with seats that size, nobody over the age of four and they wouldn't know how to plug in patch cords anyway. Ah. Now even in this day and age of exotic power plants, there's something interesting about a Subaru because it's one of only two car brands in production that uses a flat, horizontally opposed engine. This one is a horizontal flat six Boxer. 256 horsepower, 247-foot pounds of torque. It's coupled to the only transmission choice you get, a five-speed automatic with a sport shift gate. And of course it's a Subaru, so full time symmetrical all wheel drive, that's part of the package. Now let's price it out. 34200 is the base, but this is a Tribeca Limited, kind of high trim model. Then you can do the navigation. That's 2400 dollars, but it includes rear view camera and satellite radio. Or bump to Nav plus rear seat DVD. That's 4200 dollars, but it adds the rear seat entertainment system and surround sound. Or go cheap, just get satellite radio for 398 ala carte. ^M00:03:15 [ Music ]