By Philip Ruth–
If you were to assess the course of automotive trends, you’d go through a great many tangents in design and aspirations. For instance, station wagons with wood-patterned panels stuck to the sides seem absurd now, but they were the contemporary interpretation of the oak-bodied utility vehicles some still remembered from their childhoods.
SUVs as we currently know them have been around long enough for many in the younger generations to have grown up in the backs of Explorers and Pathfinders. It doesn’t seem absurd to buy a vehicle that’s mostly used on blacktop to be named and styled as if it’s ready to drive up the side of Mount Tam.
The two we’re checking out this week—the Honda Passport Trailsport and Subaru Outback Wilderness—are right in line with that. One tends to think of the Outback as a wagon, as it is two inches longer than the Passport but five inches shorter, yet it’s EPA-classified as an SUV.
The Passport’s Trailsport guise is the mid-level trim, and mine came to just over $44,000. You could spend that much on an Outback, but the Wilderness is also a mid-level trim that came in about $6,000 less than the tested Passport Trailsport.
With two “sports” in its name, you’d expect some fizzy performance from the Passport Trailsport, and that might occur off-road. On road, it’s a 4,200-pound SUV with 280 horsepower on tap from its V6 engine. The nine-speed transmission sometimes had its hands full on San Francisco’s hills, and the button-activated selector is still not my preference, but otherwise, the Passport Trailsport is as nimble as vehicles of this type can get, with particularly pleasing steering response.
The Outback Wilderness takes a different approach, with the 260 horsepower from its turbocharged four-cylinder matched to a gearless CVT transmission. It weighs about 300 pounds less than the Honda and is EPA rated at a three-mpg advantage. Over the road, the Outback Wilderness’ pluses were strong throttle response and an uncommonly comfortable ride.
While the Passport Trailsport’s additions are mostly cosmetic, the Outback Wilderness includes upgrades that raise the ground clearance to nearly 10 inches. While you would think it would turn the Wilderness into a stiffly-sprung coal cart, it’s quite the opposite, as it exhibited a rare suppleness even as it digested the ruts and bumps on Folsom Street.
Inside, both have warm-colored accents to differentiate them from other Passports and Outbacks—orange in the former, and copper in the latter. This includes the stitching in both, and they each have front headrests embossed with the Trailsport or Wilderness logos. You’d be forgiven for thinking they came from different divisions of the same company.
Space is one big advantage for the Passport Trailsport, with its boxy body holding 100.8 cubic feet of stuff with all the seats folded down. That’s 25 cubic feet more than the Outback Wilderness.
So, while the Passport Trailsport and Outback Wilderness share the same climb-every-mountain style, they each have distinct advantages.
Philip Ruth is a Castro-based automotive photojournalist and consultant with an automotive staging service.
Auto
Published on November 3, 2022
Recent Comments