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Driven: Subaru Levorg. Image by Subaru.

Driven: Subaru Levorg
There’s a lot to like about the Levorg… but where does it fit in today’s marketplace?

   



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Driven: Subaru Levorg

3.5 3.5 3.5 3.5 3.5

Good points: Surprisingly comfy ride, CVT better than expected, some Subaru chassis goodness plainly evident, good looks, nice cabin

Not so good: Can be criminally thirsty, single-model range, could do with another 100hp, what's its purpose?

Key Facts

Model tested: Subaru Levorg 1.6 GT Lineartronic
Price: Levorg GT priced from £29,680
Engine: 1.6-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol
Transmission: all-wheel drive, Lineartronic Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT)
Body style: five-door estate
CO2 emissions: 164/km (£500 first 12 months, £140 annually thereafter)
Combined economy: 39.8mpg
Top speed: 130mph
0-62mph: 8.9 seconds
Power: 170hp at 4,800- to 5,600rpm
Torque: 250Nm at 1,800- 4,800rpm

Our view:

Subaru - what does it mean to you? For many people, it's simple: think Subaru, think Impreza. The company enjoyed a surge in its public profile through the 1990s and early 2000s, thanks to the antics of the late greats Colin McRae and Richard Burns (as well as other WRC luminaries) flinging the Japanese saloon around forests at ludicrous angles. That boxer four burbling into the night, the bonnet scoop, the blue-and-gold '555' livery, flames spitting from a huge diameter, single-exit exhaust, the 2.0-litre engine's unburstable nature even under the most extreme of duress...

All wonderful. And all firmly in the past. The Impreza's halcyon days are long gone, be that as a road car or in the white heat of competition, and in reality the Subaru range now is quite hard to pin down. Identifiable nameplates continue: the cult Forester is still going; the Outback slogs along as the company's crossover estate; and the Impreza's still there, although it has been stripped of its halo WRX STI model - that's a standalone car - and has become a hatchback targeted at a ridiculously narrow countryside set who require four-wheel-drive dependability above all else; we kid you not, Subaru said 'district nurses' would be the core Impreza audience. Can you imagine Volkswagen making a car that was aimed at a specific trade? For example, bricklayers?

Essentially, Subaru is now trying to leverage its all-wheel drive status. Performance isn't the solution: Subaru's WRX STI has been outpaced by the likes of the Ford Focus RS, while the poor old BRZ coupe is outsold in the order of about seven-to-one by the mechanically identical Toyota GT86. What it needs, the company reckons, is something all-wheel drive and practical, and a little bigger than an Impreza. To that end, following the so-so XV crossover, now it brings us the Levorg.

This is an estate that's a cross between an Impreza and a Legacy, purportedly offering the interior space of the latter with the physical footprint of the former. It is sold in the UK in one specification only - as a 1.6-litre turbocharged 'boxer' petrol, rated at 170hp and 250Nm, driving all four wheels through a CVT gearbox, and you can only have this drivetrain in GT spec. Oh, and it'll cost you the best part of 30 grand. So is this intriguing car the key to Subaru's success?

We like the looks. They're not going to be to all tastes, what with the bonnet scoop and the chunky arches, and there's a definite feeling that the large alloys are too inset in the arches, making the car look oddly under-wheeled, but in blue like this it is unmistakeably a Subaru - and it's a handsome enough thing. There's a heck of a lot of front overhang in profile, though.

The interior isn't bad either. The Levorg uses the dash-top info screen with the controller sited underneath the hazard warning lights switch, which is OK, while the blue-lit dials are attractive, blue-stitched leather upholstery with heated front seats is standard fit and there's a good driving position to be attained. While it doesn't look that big of an estate, it's roomy for passengers and a 522/1,445-litre capacity is useful enough. We also like the Subaru Starlink seven-inch touchscreen infotainment, which is a cool name for starters, but while it works smoothly enough, it lacks clear 'Media' and 'Phone' buttons down the sides of the screen - the audio is accessed by pressing the small rotary knob to the top left of the unit.

This is a minor gripe, though, and after a week driving the Levorg 350 miles up and down the country, it proves to be a bizarrely charming car. It's not without further faults: the steering is unpleasant, way too darty and direct, but lacking feel or nice weighting, and the wheel's rim feels like very cheap plastic, not leather; the ride can be needlessly firm on occasion; while it's one of the best CVTs we've sampled, we'd still prefer a normal automatic to the Lineartronic; and, on the very sort of countryside-based, short journeys where these Subarus are supposed to excel, it was criminally thirsty. Within 36 miles of popping about in it locally, it had emptied almost a quarter of its 60-litre tank at a terrifying 21mpg average. And we promise we were not driving it particularly hard in that time.

Luckily, it bucked up its ideas and started turning in more like 33mpg, then achieved 38mpg on a long motorway jaunt. And it's a really impressive cruiser. The damping is superb at pace and that wide torque band allows it to exploit gaps in fast-moving traffic with ease. The Levorg is further helped by good noise suppression, although a tiny black mark here - the boxer engine is near-silent at all revs. Why is that a bad thing? Well, if you're going to have a flat-four petrol, instead of a more sensible diesel motor, it would be nice if there was more of a reward in terms of the noise.

Yet, for its 'mere' 170hp, the Subaru feels remarkably lively. From 0-30mph, it's brutally quick - like someone has quietly remapped it on the sly. The sharp throttle, instant pick-up of the Lineartronic and the symmetrical AWD make the Levorg fire off the line like a bullet if you want it to. The only shame is that this step-off acceleration, and that decent midrange, never really transform into eye-widening performance. The Levorg is merely acceptably quick, rather than rapid.

You see, as there's some of that legendary Subaru suppleness across ground (when the ride isn't being crashy), and that feeling it will grip like rabid fury during even the most lunatic cornering speeds, we can't help wondering what the Levorg would be like with 280hp, a manual 'box and a pink STI badge. Yep, that would be a retrograde development for Subaru, looking to its past instead of trying to engineer up an alternative new future, but there we are - the Levorg looks a damn sight more potent than it actually is.

Yet, despite a number of foibles, we grew to really appreciate the Levorg's individuality. And it's clearly a good car, in many respects. But we can't for the life of us work out who would buy a 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol CVT AWD estate for £30,000, when a turbodiesel rival for about £20-25,000 will do the day-to-day driving job just as well. And that's Subaru's problem - despite the brilliant potential of the Levorg, this single-specification oddity is simply not going to tempt enough people out of the many polished rivals in the segment estate. It's therefore another unusual outsider from a company that seems to be intent on ploughing a lone furrow.

Alternatives:

Audi A4 Avant: Much more expensive than the Levorg but you can see where your investment goes in terms of the Audi's unerring quality.

Mazda6 Tourer: The sort of unassuming, diesel wagon for around £25,000 that blows the Levorg clean out of the water. Mazda is classy and comfortable, and a fine wagon.

Skoda Octavia vRS Estate: If you want a great value, performance estate car with a reputation for reliability, look no further than the vRS. The only thing the Levorg has over it is AWD.


Matt Robinson - 14 Feb 2017



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