2020 Subaru Outback vs Toyota RAV4

What's the difference?

When the Subaru Outback first arrived in the mid-1990s it was an all-wheel drive station wagon with extra ground clearance for the occasional adventure… and it still is.

That the Outback never morphed into a fully-fledged SUV makes it a rare species in a world that’s fallen under the spell of big, tall, boxy machines.

Being a bit different isn’t the only reason for buying an Outback, however, and the 2.5i Premium I tested could be the pick of the model line-up.  

During my week with the car I drove hundreds of kilometres, did the daily commute and the preschool drop off, had some dirt road fun and even intentionally locked myself out of it.

The result is this: everything you need to know about the Subaru Outback 2.5i Premium.

Fun, Toyota, and hybrid are not words you often see together. Even two out of those three aren't obvious sentence-fellows. The Japanese giant spends a lot of money to convince us its cars are fun (and an equal amount telling us that daggy dads buy them) but as new cars roll on to dealer forecourts, there is more than a flicker of hope.

You see, the old RAV4 was perhaps one of my least favourite cars. Ponderous and boring but hard to ignore because of its obvious quality and longevity. I just couldn't click with it because it felt like it was targeted at the daggy dads in the ads as though they didn't deserve any better. That might be over-thinking it, but that's a glimpse inside my automotive head.

It might not be an overthink, though, because the petrol RAV4 Edge I drove last year was a vast improvement, not just on the RAV4, but on most Toyotas I had driven in the previous decade.

Something's up. Can the base model RAV4 Hybrid make all three of those words believable in the same sentence?