With demand being high for Rangers, it seemed a good opportunity to explore selling my Ranger, and to look into a different vehicle to use for road tripping and daily use.
I had thought I didn't want another SUV in the traditional sense. I've driven 4x4s and utes for the better part of 15 years now. So, my thinking was that it was time for something new and different.
I explored potentially an EV, looking at small ones like the Cupra Born and larger in the Polestar 2, along with things like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV 6. But none really fit what I wanted it for; a road tripping vehicle. EVs wise I'm still unsure regarding availability of charging for my use case.
Eventually after knocking out all the traditional SUV-type 4x4s and other types of vehicles, along with various front-wheel-drive options, I'd narrowed it down to an all-wheel drive wagon. Of which there are not a lot of those on the market. It's basically Audi, Volvo and Subaru. Audis are expensive, Volvo are at the end of their fuel-based development lives and heading to all EV soon, which left Subaru.
And after some research, and several test drives in Subarus, I found myself focusing on the Subaru Outback.
Having tested them out, and doing plenty of research I thought this was the best ideal vehicle.
Subaru Outback, side.
I thought it was everything I wanted, and for a time it was.
It was something sporty, well, sportier than what I'd had previously, fun, and a sunroof!
It was a petrol engine, something I'd not had for more than 15 years. I'd mostly preferenced diesels for their range and fuel availability.
But I'd made a decision, I wanted a change. And it was to a Subaru Outback.
And for a time, I actually really liked it, the all-wheel drive really made it feel planted on the road. It was fun to drive. There was great utility to having a lifted wagon. Although after having driven utes for the better part of 10 years, getting used to now having a boot was something new to remember and to use.
Reverse parked in; Federation Square car park.
After having had utes where to most effectively park I needed to reverse it into a parking spot all of the time, I found I was still reverse parking the Subaru, even though I could easily have driven in nose forward without any issues. And getting to the boot after reversing in was a little more tricky I discovered.
Everything was going swimmingly, I'd done a few of my 'New Adventures'-type day trips and was planning a 'test road trip', probably to Canberra, as it's a great drive either along the Princes Highway and then along the Monaro Highway, or even along the Hume and back through the Yarra Valley, a good short road trip. Maybe even a further afield trip to test its long-range road tripping abilities.
Parked nose-in at the airport.
But then I had to pick my dad up from the airport, and that's when I should have realised that there were problems. Although it was with me, rather than the car, which is almost worst, because I can't blame the vehicle for this failing.
As mentioned in my airport parking blog, the drive up was actually surprisingly easy, an easy enough drive up, free from stop start traffic.
Unfortunately on the return journey, there was a lot of stop-start traffic, and that's when I started to get an ache in my knee.
I didn't think much of it at the time, I'd been in the garden in the days before, and done some walking and other stuff, plus I'd driven up there. Maybe it was nothing, I didn't think much of it.
Then it was a few weeks later and I was driving back from the city, and again in stop-start traffic, and a little bit of an ache in my right knee and a little bit in my hip. I just thought, again, I'd been out and about walking around the city. Nothing really to be concerned about.
Then these things continued to happen, I thought 'it's a different vehicle, maybe I'll just reset the seat and steering wheel etc'.
Subaru Outback interior
When I'd picked it up the car the sales guy kinda loomed over me to change the seat and steering wheel settings while all I wanted to do was try and relax and work out the best way to sit. (He'd sort of leaned into the driver's window, kinda personal space invading.)
So I set everything back to base setting, lowered the seat back and pushed it all the way back and set the steering wheel to its most neutral position. Got out of the car, locked it, walked around a little bit.
Then unlocked it, got back in as though it was a new vehicle.
Then I set it all up, and it was comfortable, and then I went out for a long, slow-ish drive around familiar roads, stopping to adjust the seating etc to be comfortable, as you can only really know how it feels when you're driving, rather than sat in your driveway at a stop.
I thought 'yes, I've fixed it'.
I left it for a few weeks, and it seemed okay, although I was just running errands etc, nothing terribly hard or any lengthy driving.
And then there went a few days where I'd not driven at all.
However, then I went to see my grandma, and was in some traffic, not exactly stop-start traffic, just general traffic and light-traffic with stop lights.
And then the pain was back, in my right knee, and also travelling up to my hip.
Now it was about problem solving; what was this pain, what could I do to mitigate it and work out what it was that was wrong.
It was me.
Long legs, and the more relaxed seating position of a car. It was just not working for my body shape.
Jeep Wrangler in Tasmania.
Before the Rangers, I'd had a Jeep Wrangler (loved that vehicle, leaked despite replacing all the roof/door seals twice, I’d never have one again, but I absolutely loved it), the Jeep I'd had for a number of years with no concerns comfort wise. It also had quite an upright seating position, you sat and drove it more like sat in a chair than lounging.
The Rangers too, at least how I had the seat set up, I put it into a similar position as I had in the Jeep, that more upright sort of position with my legs.
With the Subaru it was more of a car-like sitting stretched out experience. Once I worked out this was the problem, I tried to replicate this seating position I'd had in previous vehicles, I couldn't not to the same extent. It's just the wrong shape of vehicle to have that sort of seating. But I tried, and again tried to change the seating position to mitigate the pain I was experiencing.
Then I tried driving it for some time, and it didn't really help, I wondered 'am I tensing now that I've tried it in a different position?', 'is it me now trying too much?' so I reset it again to a more relaxed potion, so I wouldn't need to have as much tension on my leg / hip area, to see if that changed things.
It didn't.
So then I started to wonder 'is this just in my head?', was I positioning myself weird, tensing oddly, and there was just something that I was doing, or thinking about doing that was causing my body stresses.
So I got others of my family to sit in it, and at first they couldn't see where I was coming from, and then told them to keep switching between brake and accelerator; simulating being in stop-start traffic, and they agreed, that they could see where I was coming from.
Beyond this issue of myself, there was one quite large issue with the Subaru, which I had resolved to live with, although annoying. It was its conservativeness regarding fuel economy and the distance to empty it reported.
It had a 62L tank, and would report about 500km to empty, no matter how I drove it, how I reset the trip computer or fuel efficiency monitor.
And on 1/4 of a tank all it thought it could do was 80km.
I'd used the trip computer to actually calculate how much it could do, and it was closer to 750km.
That in itself was not a deal breaker.
The pain, however was not something I could live with.
I'd at that point avoided really going out, unless it was absolutely necessary, because of the pain, and the worry of the extended effects of said pain.
So, much to my disappointment, not to mention annoyance in myself and my body I needed to be rid of the Outback, and return to something familiar. (Not a Jeep Wrangler, although I did, very briefly consider it).
I've always considered failures as a learning opportunity, albeit the larger ones more than sting, they do inform the future.
