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Two unpretentious stars for town and country

Although it’s hard to find a vehicle that strikes the right balance between quality and unpretentious versatility, keen drivers do have some options. William McCartney takes a look at how the Skoda Yeti and Subaru Outback 3.6 Premium measure up

Cars, like lawyers, should not take themselves too seriously. On that principle, one of the cars we’re taking a look at today gets two points immediately, just for having a name that starts with Skoda and ends with Yeti.

A certain lack of gravitas, combined with genuine competence at what they are designed to do, is what allows only a small number of cars to take their owner anywhere without either looking too cheap or making their owner look too pretentious. The Fiat 500 can do it. So can the Mini. Dare I mention it again, the Land Rover Defender pulls it off. From a freezing works union meeting to afternoon tea at Government House, any of those will do both jobs. Possibly only Bishop Tamaki or Kiri Te Kanawa would be too important to be seen in one.

In my opinion, which is what counts, seeing as I am writing this, the Subaru Outback is another, well-established member of that club. Partly, that is down to consistently brilliant marketing. Owners have been convinced by catchy music and grainy images that driving an Outback says: “When I mountain bike, it’s on real mountains”; “I could afford a Range Rover, but I can’t afford having the steering wheel fall off my car at the top of a glacier”; and “I’m only wearing a suit and driving at peak hour because I choose to”. But also partly because the Outback has always done its job extremely well.

I’m now going to suggest that the Skoda Yeti, despite being a clean sheet design with no family history at all, also achieves that difficult double.

Despite the Yeti being built in an almost bewildering number of variations, New Zealand gets only 4WD Yetis with diesel engines, which mercifully reduces major decision making down to whether to have an automatic or manual transmission.

Having sampled only the manual, I can confidently say it is the pick of the two. The two-litre engine is beyond Rudolf Diesel’s wildest dreams and the gearbox/clutch combination is slicker than a ministerial credit card. It handles well, it’s downright fun to drive, yet (not entirely relevant I know) practical. And then, to bring it home, it has a shortfall of gravitas that would impress Iain M Banks.

Having said that, I have to point out that the marketing people at Skoda take themselves way too seriously.  Try this, from the Yeti brochure:

“You’ve picked a scent that starts where the road ends. Shhh… you hear an echo. Maybe. Or maybe you just heard an answer to the questions you never dared ask.”

There’s five pages of this stuff. Come back, Bishop, all is forgiven.

Subaru Outback
The new Outback has been criticised for looking odd. It doesn’t really look odd – it just doesn’t look as good as its predecessor. By what appears to be a significant margin. Mainly this is because the shape of the bonnet was dictated by the need to make it soft for pedestrians’ heads to slam into, rather than the desirability of presenting a rakish face to the world. It does improve with familiarity.

Aside from sharing all-wheel drive with the Yeti, the Outback Premium otherwise takes a fundamentally different approach in hardware. It has a big 3.6 litre petrol boxer engine instead of a small diesel, and a conventional five-speed auto where the Yeti has a six-speed manual. 

It has also gained a fair dollop of size. And this is where the competence thing comes in. Instead of getting bigger and fatter and heavier and worse to drive than the previous model, the new Outback is bigger but no heavier, and a better drive than before. There’s more power from the bigger new engine, and better handling.  All that, and moderate off-road ability as well.

The SI dial with which you can adjust throttle response and gear change points has been given an upgrade. The old one gave you a three-way choice of Hopelessly Sluggish, Fast, or A Bit Too Much. The new software has upped Hopelessly Sluggish to Functionally Adequate, which makes that setting about right for wombling about town. For any other situation, Fast will mostly do, but why select that when A Bit Too Much is just another notch away?

Close your eyes when driving it, and you could believe you were in something from Germany with a price tag that would scare a Dalek. Don’t actually close your eyes when driving it – it’s illegal and probably dangerous.

Two good cars. Spooky.

Skoda Yeti    $48,000.00
Subaru Outback 3.6 Premium      $59,990.00

NZLawyer magazine, issue 139, 25 June 2010