2019 Subaru XV Review

The Subaru XV is a taller version of the very impressive Impreza hatchback, with a more comfortable ride, a longer touring range, and the ability to get you a bit further off the beaten track than most small SUVs.

The all-wheel drive XV also offers Subaru’s EyeSight suite of driver aids, which includes smart cruise control and broadly effective autonomous emergency braking. It also features Subaru’s X-Mode downhill assist feature that will help slowly negotiate steep and slippery terrain without having to manually apply the brakes.

Driving at less than 80km/h on the space-saver spare tyre until you can fix your full-sized flat. (The previous XV, which this car replaces, carried a full-sized spare. Subaru substituted a space-saver this time, to keep weight down, and to leave more room in the boot – which is still quite small.

Having to fool with the centre seatbelt when you fold the rear seatbacks: it is built into the side of the boot, and stowing it is complicated.

Five-door hatchback only.

The Subaru XV drives all four wheels, at all times.

The XV is classed as a small SUV, lower priced.

Cruise control, and air-conditioning that maintains a set temperature. Controls on the steering wheel for operating the cruise control, the audio system and your phone.

A colour touchscreen for controlling cabin functions. An MP3-compatible sound system with a radio, CD player, Bluetooth connectivity for voice and audio streaming, and Aux and USB inputs.

Support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which lets you display some apps from compatible smartphones on the touchscreen and control them from there.

Height and reach adjustment for the steering wheel, and height adjustment for the driver’s seat.

Roof rails, which make it easier to fit rooftop luggage systems.

Aluminium alloy wheels, and a space-saver spare wheel with speed and distance restrictions. A tyre pressure monitor, which warns you if a tyre is going flat.

All-wheel-drive, which improves traction and stability on slippery surfaces. Automatic transmission.

Active torque vectoring, which helps the car turn more keenly (by braking individual wheels selectively).

Hill-start assistance, which controls the brakes to help you take off on uphill slopes.

X-Mode, a system borrowed from the Subaru Forester, which helps the XV climb slippery slopes. It directs drive to the wheels that have the most grip.

Seven airbags, and a reversing camera. Electronic stability control, which can help you control a skidding car. (For the placement of airbags, and more on XV safety systems, please open the Safety section below.)

Every Subaru XV carries a five-year, unlimited kilometre warranty.

The sole engine available with the Subaru XV is a 2.0-litre petrol four-cylinder. When teamed with the continuously variable automatic transmission, it uses about 7.0 litres/100km on the official test (city and country combined).

A very similar engine powers the Subaru Impreza small hatch and sedan. In real-world comparison testing conducted for the January 2017 issue of Wheels magazine, an Impreza 2.0i-L hatch with this engine averaged 9.1 litres/100km. You could expect the taller, heavier XV to use a little more fuel than an Impreza.

The XV engine differs from other makers’ small-car four-cylinder units in that it lies flat across the engine bay rather than standing up vertically. This places the weight of the engine lower in the car, which – in theory anyway – helps it steer more responsively. And its arrangement of the cylinders in opposed pairs – colloquially a boxer configuration – helps it run very smoothly.

While the engine in this XV shares its layout and 2.0-litre capacity with the car it supersedes, it has been redesigned extensively. The most prominent change is a move to direct petrol injection – which supplies fuel directly to each cylinder at high pressure, allowing the engine to use less of it while making a bit more power.

The XV can shut down its engine when you are stopped, restarting automatically when you take your foot off the brake pedal to drive away. That saves fuel in the city.

Every XV comes with a continuously variable automatic transmission (CVT). It uses artificial ratio steps to mimic the feel of a seven-speed conventional automatic – avoiding the irritating engine droning that some CVT cars exhibit when you accelerate hard.

The least costly XV, the 2.0i, comes with a 6.5-inch central screen, cloth seat trim, and 17-inch alloy wheels.

Paying more for an XV 2.0i-L brings you a lot of extra kit, perhaps most importantly Subaru’s EyeSight active safety suite. EyeSight includes adaptive cruise control, which can accelerate and brake to match the speed of a car in front. A lead-vehicle start alert lets you know when a vehicle ahead of you in a queue has moved on. There is autonomous emergency braking, which works at city and highway speeds, and lane keeping assistance. (For more on these systems, please open the Safety section below.)

The 2.0i-L also has an 8.0-inch touchscreen, and two displays on the instrument panel, controllable from the steering wheel, that can show your EyeSight settings and other helpful stuff. There is nicer cloth seat trim, and leather on the steering wheel and gear lever. Dual-zone climate-control air conditioning allows individual temperature adjustment for the driver and front passenger. And the exterior mirrors can be power-folded, to keep them out of harm’s way when you’re parked.

Spending more again for an Impreza 2.0-i Premium gets you a powered sunroof and satellite navigation – the latter including the ability to have turn-by-turn instructions shown on the instrument panel display rather than just on the central screen.

The most expensive Impreza, the 2.0i-S, adds luxury and safety. It has part-leather seat trim, with the driver’s seat power adjustable. Windscreen wipers operate automatically when it rains. Headlights use very bright and long-lived LEDs, switch on automatically when it’s dark, dip themselves for oncoming traffic, and swivel to shine into corners. Blind-spot monitoring, lane-change assistance and a rear cross-traffic alert enhance safety, and the auto-braking works in reverse. The wheel diameter grows to 18 inches, and the tyres are the same width but slightly lower in profile.

The bigger, 18-inch, tyres on the 2.0i-S will cost more to replace, and will feel a bit bumper to drive on than the taller-profile tyres on other XVs (because their shallower sidewalls leave less air and rubber between you and the road).

Nine colours are available, and choosing a metallic, silica or pearl finish does not add to the price.

The leather-trimmed seats in the 2.0i-S are more slippery than the cloth–covered seats on the less expensive XVs, and you slide around in them more. That’s most noticeable when driving on rough gravel roads or tracks, where the cloth-trimmed seats hold you in place better and feel more comfortable.

This new-generation XV is very much like the new Subaru Impreza inside – and that’s good.

Like the Impreza, the XV is roomier than the car it replaced. The cabin is smartly designed, and trimmed to a standard much higher than seen in the previous XV. The premium cloth seats in the 2.0i-L and 2.0-i Premium versions are durable and comfortable, and arguably feel better than the leather seats in the pricier 2.0i-S.

Tilt and reach adjustment for the steering wheel makes it easy for you to get comfortable behind it, even if the seat backrest could use finer adjustment. The chunky wheel, leather-bound on most versions, and neat new switchgear imbue the XV with a level of class beyond its relatively meagre price point.

Even the XV 2.0i, the least costly XV, has two info screens in addition to the big central touchscreen.

Dash-mounted air vents sit high and proud, filtering climate-controlled freshness in typically chilled Subaru fashion.

Early impressions suggest the XV rides a bit better on its taller suspension than the Impreza, ironing out all but the sharpest bumps.

The longer wearing and fuel saving Yokohama BlueEarth E70 tyres fitted to the less costly cars generated more road noise than the 18-inch Bridgestone Dueller H/P Sport rubber on the XV 2.0i-S.

The XV comes with seven airbags, anti-lock brakes, stability control, seatbelt reminders for all seats, seatbelt pre-tensioners on the front and outer rear seats, and a reversing camera. Its standard safety package emphasises your control of the car, your protection in a crash, and the safety of those outside the car when you’re reversing.

There is an airbag apiece ahead of the driver and front passenger; a knee airbag for the driver; an airbag outside each front occupant at chest level to protect from side impacts; and side-curtain airbags extending past both seat rows at head level, protecting occupants front and rear from side impacts.

Augmenting this on the XV 2.0i-L, 2.0-i Premium and 2.0i-S is Subaru’s EyeSight active safety suite, which brings you autonomous emergency braking and lane-keeping assistance, among other features.

Based on stereo cameras, the auto braking works at city and highway speeds, warning of an impending collision and braking automatically if you fail to react. Subaru says this third-generation system uses better image sensors that detect hazards – and endangered pedestrians – under a wider range of contrast conditions and at longer range than its previous systems.

Lane keeping assistance alerts you if you have begun to drift out of your lane on the highway, perhaps through distraction, and can correct the steering gently to help guide you back.

The XV 2.0i-S (only) improves on this with a Vision assist suite, which uses radar-based sensors to scan behind you. It warns you if you are about to change lanes into the path of an adjacent or overtaking car. When you reverse out of a driveway or parking space, it alerts you to vehicles crossing your path to the rear. And it can brake the car automatically if it predicts you are about to reverse into a solid object.

The Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) awarded the Subaru XV a five-star rating for safety, its maximum, in May 2017.

Yes. The new Subaru XV delivers just about everything we liked about the Impreza, including the poised and fluid feel from behind the wheel, and the nice way that it turns into corners, especially when driven with a bit of enthusiasm. Every XV comes with active torque vectoring, which helps here.

The jacked-up suspension seems to absorb small, sharp, bumps better than the suspension on the Impreza, but even the XV will occasionally run out of suspension travel on a big bumps, sending a loud “thump” into the cabin.

The fuel tank in the XV holds 63 litres – about 25 per cent more than the tank in the Impreza. That should give you significantly longer range between fills.

On gravel roads and dirt tracks, an assured all-wheel-drive system and sharply tuned electronic stability control do a good job of discouraging the XV from wriggling around on the loose surfaces. The X-Mode’s hill-crawl function, which helps the XV climb slippery slopes, and the hill descent control that helps it get you back down, both work well, giving this small SUV some real-world off-road ability.

The XV’s 2.0-litre petrol engine produces just as much power as it does for the Impreza, but in the taller XV it has to deal with more weight. If you demand a sharp burst of speed – when joining fast-moving freeway traffic, for example – the engine and gearbox need to work quite hard and generate a lot of noise.

It’s great for a car of its type, and better than in the already good outgoing XV, with a comfortable seat and enough leg and shoulder room to keep two big adults quite happy.

The stadium-style seating provides a superb outlook as well, and dedicated vents supply heating and cooling.

When driving on loose surfaces, the XV does a great job of suppressing gravel splash – the noise that stones make when the tyres throw them up into the wheel wells.

Boot space is about the same as in the superseded car a little below average for small SUV, with 310 litres – still slightly less than the 345 litres available in the Impreza.

Seats split-fold 60-40 for extending the load space to 765 litres.

The XV can legally tow a braked trailer weighing up to 1400kg.

The Subaru XV is manufactured in Japan.

Maybe the more immediate acceleration of turbocharged alternatives such as the Hyundai Kona, Toyota C-HR, Citroen C3 Aircross and Peugeot 2008.

Possibly lower fuel consumption and a longer range between fills from a diesel engine, which you can have in a Mazda CX-3 or Mitsubishi ASX, for example.

The ability to tackle more challenging tracks off-road. The XV is as good as, or better than, most small SUVs in this respect, but alternatives with much more off-road ability include the Suzuki Jimny, and Jeep Renegade Trailhawk.

Among other small SUVs (with less off-road ability) worth considering are the Honda HR-V, and Nissan Qashqai.

The best value here is in the most expensive XV, the 2.0i-S. The price premium gets you leather seat trim, heated front seats and side mirrors, auto LED headlights and auto-wipers, and the rear-facing active safety features introduced with the Vision Assist package.

This second-generation XV arrived in June 2017 as an all-new model.

A mid-life upgrade, featuring the newer third-generation EyeSight active safety system, driver recognition/monitoring technology, and mild-hybrid powertrain is expected in the first half of 2020.