Driving from coast to coast in a Subaru Forester and Volvo S60

In this episode producers Alex Malburg and Christopher McGraw head to the mitten state in the dead of winter to test two very different vehicles, the impeccably designed Volvo S60 T8, and the latest generation of the Subaru Forester.

Transcript

ERIK MAIER: This is Autoblog.

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For over 15 years, our team has covered the auto industry. You can find more of our content at Autoblog.com. But here on "The Autoblog show," each episode features our favorite videos of the hottest new cars from all over the world. This is what moves us.

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CHRISTOPHER MCGRAW: Ooh, that's good.

ERIK MAIER: We are drivers, off-roaders, journalists, tech geeks, gamers, film makers and adventurers. This is Autoblog.

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Coming up on this episode of "The Autoblog Show," the Subaru Forester has grown from a boxy, sporty little SUV to a comfortable crossover, but does the newest generation still have the same Subaru soul? Later on, we review the minimalist Volvo S60. This Swedish sedan is a supreme example of Scandinavian design, but how does it drive?

CHRISTOPHER MCGRAW: Ah. My friends and family think I'm crazy. Well, for a number of different reasons, but specifically because I love the cold. It's pretty fitting that I would fly to Michigan in the dead of winter just to drive our 2019 Subaru Forester Touring across the state and review it.

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Now that we're inside the car, let's talk about the exterior styling. The 2019 model is Subaru's fifth generation Forester, and I think with each redesign, I'm actually liking this car less and less lookswise. I really wish instead of this bulbous crossover redesign that this one currently has, they would have stuck to the boxy Foresters of, you know, the first, second, and third generations and made something different. This just looks like everything else out there on the market.

I also-- I don't know. I really don't like the color options, specifically for the Forest Touring, which is what we're driving now. So this color is called Horizon Blue Pearl, and it's not going to offend anybody, but it's also not going to get anybody excited either. Where are the colors that used to make me excited about Subarus? Like Rally Blue and Hyper Blue and whatever the orange is for the Crosstrek and that yellow that the special edition Crosstrek had a few years back. Man, those are awesome colors. These, not so much.

So hopping into the interior, in the Touring, you can get any interior color you want, any material you want, as long as it's black or brown leather. I actually like the brown leather. I don't like it with the blue paint job, but I think that has more to do with the paint than it does the interior. Once you get in, this is a very spacious and airy interior. I will say even though I don't like the exterior of the newer Foresters, this is by far the most comfortable I've ever been driving a Subaru Forester.

With the sunroof, the interior is just so bright and airy. The pillars are small. It's very easy to see in almost every direction. The touchscreen is easy to use, though it is pretty glossy, so when it's bright out, there is quite a bit of glare that's coming off the screen itself. I'm really impressed with how it's evolved from what arguably was the worst infotainment system out there to something that's easy to use. It's just no frills.

Speaking of infotainment, I was just in the Volvo S60 doing a review of that car, and the audio system-- it's a Harman Kardon audio system in that car-- sounds amazing. And so I hopped into this thinking, you know, here's a vehicle that's roughly half the price of that one, probably has a way worse audio system, and could I not have been more wrong. We turned up our music all the way in this car, and the audio system is phenomenal.

For something that's in the $30,000 range, I was really pleasantly surprised at how good the audio quality is. And that's why I looked down at the speakers and saw that this is a Harman Kardon audio system as well, so it makes sense that the one in the Volvo and the one in the Subaru both sound very good. It's just that you're paying twice as much for a car in that Volvo. I just didn't expect it out of the Subaru.

For the model year 2020, Subaru brought back the turbo in the Outback, which is great for that vehicle, but they took it out of the Subaru Forester lineup, and I don't know why. The Forester XT was much more fun to drive with that engine than it is now. This engine, it's fine. There's not enough power when you're going to pass someone on the highway, which you can make me a little anxious on roadtrips when you're surrounded by semi trucks. I really, really miss the turbocharger.

This Forester also has Subaru's driver-focused safety system, which was a finalist for our 2020 Autoblog Tech of the Year Award. Since then, I've driven it more, and I found the technology to actually be more of an annoyance than helpful. Safety systems are great. They help you keep your eyes on the road, keep you less distracted. But when they start distracting you to the point where you're shutting them off, they no longer work.

So Subaru has got to do something about all these beeps. They drive me crazy. We just shut it all off just to be able to film this. Every second you look back to see if you're changing lanes, or if I'm looking down but have my eyes on the road, I'm wearing sunglasses, it thinks I'm falling asleep, so it'll beep at me constantly, and I just find it more infuriating than helpful at this point.

Driver focus does have some cool aspects when you get into the car. It will remember your face. So it had been a little bit since I had driven this car, and it remembered my face when I got in. It adjusted the seats, mirrors, steering wheel to how I like it, which is a pretty neat feature, but not neat enough to keep it on when it's just beeping constantly annoying me.

On the flip side, the steering wheel is leather wrapped, and it feels fantastic. The button layout just makes sense. I got into this car for the first time a few months back, and instinctively, I knew where everything was and how to use it. It doesn't take a week or two for me to figure out where the button layout is. Plus, there are a ton of buttons on the steering wheel, which is where I want them. My hands are almost always on the wheel, so when the buttons are also on the steering wheel it just makes my life easier.

The other thing that I like-- front seats both heated. Nothing miraculous there. But there are just switches where the heated seats turn on and off. Getting in this and out-- in and out of this and the Volvo S60, the Volvo's got everything in the touch screen, and I have to look down at the touch screen to figure out how to turn on and off the heated seats. This, I could just turn on and off without having to look down at all.

So this is technically in the compact crossover category, which is a little bit misleading. This is almost in no way compact, which when you're maybe trying to fit into a tight parking space might be an issue. But for me and my passengers, not an issue whatsoever. The backseat is very comfortable, has a ton of space, and there's a bunch of space for your cargo in the trunk.

So when it comes to the driving modes, you have a few different options. You have a sport mode here that-- I mean, sport mode, pretty self-explanatory. Then you have also an intelligent mode. It says SI Drive. It shows you right up here when you press it, so there is Sport mode and there's Intelligent mode.

And all Intelligent mode is it should help you with your fuel economy while trying to remain sporty. I don't feel even in Sport mode that the forester is all that sporty, especially when you're talking Subarus, WRX or anything like that, way more sporty than the Forester, as it should be. So I just pretty much keep it on Intelligent mode to help with my fuel economy.

Some other options you have down here, X mode, which is just an easy way to say that there are different driving modes here for snow and dirt and deep snow and mud, and then you can just hit the button, and it'll bring you back to normal. Thankfully, it is not snowy whatsoever right now, even though it's February here in Michigan, so I haven't had to use either of these yet. But it is a Subaru, comes with all-wheel drive, and we do have winter tires on these wheels right now. I don't think we'd have any problem handling any snow or ice we could throw it at.

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Right about now, you might be thinking to yourself, man, this guy really hates Subarus, and that's just not the case at all. My personal car is a Subaru Crosstrek, and I drive that thing all over the place, and the Outback XD has been one of my favorite cars I've driven around the mountains these past few months. It's just that the Subaru Forester leaves me feeling a little bit uninspired.

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The outgoing unique personality the forester used to have is gone, replaced by a lobotomized focus group designed vehicle that isn't as fun to drive or look at. In a day and age where every other company is attaching turbos and making their compact crossovers more fun to drive, Subaru seems to have taken the opposite route, removing the turbo and manual option in the Forester. That said, this Forester is by far the most comfortable and practical I've ever driven. But to me, comfort and practicality aren't enough to win out, especially when Subaru itself has been making so many better, more interesting options. And if that safety system beeps at me one more time one looking to see if it's clear to change lanes, I'm going to lose my mind.

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Shut up.

ERIK MAIER: Up next, we head to Michigan in the dead of winter to drive the plug-in Volvo S60 T8.

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CHRISTOPHER MCGRAW: I have to admit, when I first heard which Volvo we'd be getting as this year's Autoblog long-term test vehicle, I was a bit disappointed. I'm admittedly a wagon guy, and the 2020 Volvo S60 is the most milquetoast thing Volvo makes. A V90 Cross Country or XC90 would have been more interesting. But at least our S60 is the T8.

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So I hit the road driving across the state from Detroit to Chicago in the dead of winter to see if the S60 could convince me that it isn't the least exciting vehicle in Volvo's lineup, a lineup that is, arguably, its best ever.

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I feel like everybody on staff feels the same way about this car, and it's just that it makes everything feel so simple. Under the hood, you have a 313 horsepower ICE and an 87 horsepower electrical engine, which means you got 400 horsepower in this sedan. One thing that we don't all agree on is the transition from electric engine to gas and how smooth it is. Half of us feel like it does a good job and few people feel like it doesn't, and it could use some work. I think we can probably chalk that up to just different driving experiences.

Personally in my experience, I think it's fairly smooth. And when you need the power, the gas engine kicks in, and it's no problem. It also is approaching 500 foot pounds of torque, so you just feel confident on the road with the power under the hood. When I was driving like 70 miles an hour on the highway and I needed to pass someone quickly because they were kind of driving like an idiot, I was able to do that without, you know, having to floor it and wait for the power to kick. It just is there.

Steering-wise, on some of these country roads, you got hills, turns, curves. It's just accurate. You have great feel through the wheel, and you just know where you're placing the car, and it's just easy to do. On some of these S curves, the steering is incredibly precise. Not to mention, it's incredibly fun.

That being said, the one thing that I am kind of having a hard time with, and I'm not the only one, is the brake feels seems a little bit inconsistent through each of the drive modes and even within the same drive mode. Sometimes the regen really grips hard on those brakes, and other times it doesn't. So it's kind of interesting to have to figure out, you know, how much brake to apply at certain times to really get the feel that you're going for instead of just knowing consistently how the braking is going to feel when you press down the pedal.

The other thing that I don't like is the sound. So right now, let's see, we are in the hybrid everyday use drive mode. Let's put it into the power mode for sporty driving. And there's just-- it's very quiet in here, which can be nice. Like I don't want it to sound like a GT350R when I'm just driving down the highway. But I would when I floor it, I'd like to hear a little more than you do here.

It's just something, especially in the sporty power performance mode, that I would like to hear more of. I like a crackle when I floor it, like, you know, you hear from a lot of Jags. When I'm looking for a more sporty experience, having that sound come out of the exhaust would just envelop me in the driving experience better than it does currently.

So overall, I'm a fan of Scandinavian design, whether we're talking about vehicles or home decor or home design in general, so it's not a shock that I am in love with Volvo interiors and their exteriors. You got the Thor's hammer headlight, which came out like five years ago now on the XC 90, and it just looks gorgeous, the way that the turn signals a light up on the headlights. We were driving around Grand Rapids last night, and there were quite a few Volvo's around us, and every time they turned on the turn signal, I was like, man, that looks fantastic. It looks like a piece of metal that had just come out of a forge.

Everything else is fairly minimalist. This is a white car, gets dirty very easily. We've spent quite a bit on car washes so far. But when it's clean, it really stands out on these gray, cloudy Michigan days.

I just got done with a run on the beach in Saugatuck. It is 30 degrees out. It is cold out here and passed by some incredible Scandinavian architecture, which brings me to the interior of this Volvo S60 T8. This interior is phenomenal. The wood paneling here is just classy.

I even like the brown leather. I'm not usually a brown leather fan, and there are like no panel gaps anywhere. Take note, General Motors, because this is what a luxury interior should look and feel like.

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I've spent, I don't know, six or seven hours driving this thing across the state and then just around the west side of Michigan, and 100% of the time I've been comfortable. These seats are incredible. The only thing that I don't like about the seats is the fact that we have to use this touchscreen to turn on the heated seats. Getting rid of knobs and buttons altogether is probably, while it's a much cleaner look and adds to the minimalist interior of this Volvo, it also kind of frustrates me a little bit, just because sometimes I want knobs and buttons that way I don't have to look at what I'm doing. I don't have to take my eyes off the road and be unsafe to turn on heated seats or change the radio or whatnot. And the one knob that they do have is the volume knob, which is incredibly poorly placed behind the crystal, the gorgeous crystal shifter. And I keep hitting the shifter every time I'm trying to change the volume, or I have a coffee here, and I can't reach it very easily either.

And then to adjust the actual temperature, you press it here, and then it brings up this entire panel, and I have to take a look. So right now I'm at 64. I like cars to be a little bit cold. I'm wearing winter clothes. So I hit that, and you can hit, you know, minus or plus if you're staring at it, or you can just do that. And sometimes, I just hit the wrong thing. It seems a little unnecessary when you can have like a knob or a button below that you don't have to stare at and keep your eyes off the road for so long.

The audio system, Harman Kardon audio system, you can be riding around and just crank it up all the way, and it sounds great. All things that I would expect out of a almost $60,000 Volvo sedan. Another thing that a few of us are conflicted about at the office is this crystal shift knob. I have loved the crystal shift knob since the first time I saw them, which was I think in 2014 in an XC 90. Our Associate Editor, Joel Stocksdale, whom I almost exclusively disagree with on everything, does not like the crystal shift knob, though we do agree with pretty much everything else in this interior. You got cup holders right here.

Another nit pick thing that I-- I don't know, it's not that I don't like it, I just think it's a little extra for no reason, is these start and stop knob. So you just do that to start and stop the car. I think having a button would probably be just as easy. It's just them being different for sake of being different, which I know is ironic considering I love the crystal shift knob, which is also just being different for the sake of being different.

All right, so here we are with the infotainment system. Very minimalist, just has a few buttons down here, and if you hit this, it will show you how to use it. This is maybe the only infotainment system that has a button that shows you how to use it. Either that's a nice thing for people, or it just shows that they're infotainment system is a little too complicated, and, you know, maybe make it a little easier.

So like it says, you scroll horizontally to access the side panels and see all your different applications here. You can scroll down, Spotify, Yelp, Glimpse, Pandora, all that sort of thing, Apple CarPlay if you're plugged in. And then each one of these you can tap. So we've got a map here. The--

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Audio. Oh, god. Detroit audio. We're on the west side, so it's just static. There's no phone connected, and Apple CarPlay I don't have connected right now. And then you go left, and it shows you a ton of vehicle functions, which this is the part that I like the most. It's very informative. You can go and look at your charge, and the engine will charge the hybrid battery. That's a pretty cool thing.

You can lock the battery so that it will be there when you need to use it later. You can turn off traction control, and you can also do like headrest fold, heads up display adjustments. You'll want to do this definitely when you're adjusting the seat, and you get to go down and see all the different things you turn on and off. And then you can swipe down, see your settings, owner's manual, and set a profile up. I am Darth Vader right now, and that's my profile. I don't know why it's set to that. I'm going to guess it was John Snyder.

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Out of everything that Volvo offers, the sedan, to me, personally, is probably the least interesting. I'm more of a wagon guy, but I just found myself staring at this sedan. Whenever we got gas and I walked out of the gas station and saw it parked there, I was just staring at it and smiling. In addition to maybe some better sound coming out of the exhaust, adding paddle shifters would make this a lot more engaging when it comes to driving. So the T8 has the battery.

Right now, battery is almost-- actually it has charged itself back up to a quarter. It was dead. We've been on the highway for a little bit, and it drained itself. There is a plug up front, very simple to use. There isn't a ton of range, but I like the fact that it's there for A, the power, and B, when I'm going around town, I don't have to use gas all that often. I filled up a couple of times on this trip, and we've driven, you know, a few miles. But most of the time, I was just filling up from 3/4 to full, and I haven't used a ton of gas.

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The greenhouse, because we have the sunroof, I think is fine. I think it's acceptable. I don't think it's horrible. I don't think it's outstanding. If we didn't have the sunroof, I think I would feel pretty cramped in here, which is kind of surprising considering the fact that I'm only 5' 7". So the seat's incredibly comfortable, and one of the reasons for that is how much you can adjust them. It takes just a little bit to figure out exactly how to adjust everything. You have lumbar support, and you actually have to select on the side of the chair between lumbar support and the cushion extension, and then you can move it back and forth.

And then you also have your normal seat movements back and forward. But because you can customize them to however you like, sitting in it for hours is no problem whatsoever. I could probably sleep in this seat if we were parked and not driving, no problem, actually. It leans back pretty far. Yep.

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That's as far back as I'm willing to go while driving. But yeah, there's just an incredible amount of customization when it comes to the seats, and it just lets you drive all day without feeling like you have driven all day.

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So I brought up the sticker of this Volvo, and the base price for the S60 T8 is $55,400, which I think is an appropriate price. The extras that we have in here are the heated steering wheel and the heated rear seats, $750. The metallic paint, $645. I think that's a funny term for the paint, because it doesn't look very metallic from the outside. It's just white paint. We have integrated end pipes that cost $285. The 19 inch wheels are 200 hours apiece, so another $800 total, and roughly $1,000 destination charge, which brings the total MSRP of this test vehicle to $58,875, which doesn't seem too outrageous to me. It is an incredibly good looking vehicle inside and out, it performs well, and it's a luxury vehicle, so south of 60 feels like a solid price.

Sure, the lack of buttons and knobs can be a bit frustrating, and the interior storage is minimal, but there's not much else to complain about with the Volvo S60 T8. I'm definitely jealous of the guys in the Detroit office who get to drive this thing for the rest of the year.

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ERIK MAIER: Thanks for watching, and we hope you enjoyed this episode of "The Autoblog Show." For a lot more of our content, check us out at Autoblog.com, where you can find the latest reviews and news on all of your favorite cars.