There is just one thing missing: more power for those who want it. The Impreza hatch is enough in almost all its aspects, but for this family, a little extra punch would go a long way. It doesn’t need to go to plaid – it just needs to get past the slowpokes.
Totally agree. When approaching an on-ramp to the highway I put the CVT into manual mode and keep it in 3rd gear until the engine winds up to 4000 rpm, I find that's the quickest way to get up to merging speed or 100 km/h. In fact, the CVT is surprisingly responsive in manual mode and you can quickly change gears with the paddle shifters. The weird thing about the CVT in auto-mode is the tachometer needle won't move much while you're accelerating, sometimes it might even drop if you're not pressing down hard enough on the accelerator, so to pass someone on the highway it's better to pop it into manual mode and downshift to 4th to get the engine into it's peak torque range around 4000 rpm, and then after you pass that 911 GT3 RS with the SharkWerks exhaust, you can put it back into auto mode and let it upshift all by itself, no problem.
On my last road trip I was getting 5.4L/100km through rural roads with little traffic. So far I've been averaging 6.4L/100km with mostly city driving. I can't remember the last time I got more than 7.0L/100km with over 20,000 kms on the odometer. Of course I don't really know if these numbers are real since there's no way to verify if the car's computer is accurate when calculating the fuel economy, for all I know I could be averaging 12.8L/100km.
One thing that may be a real problem is I find the windshield washer pressure is too low when driving on the highway. At a stop light the washer sprays fluid all over the windshield, but on the highway it barely reaches the bottom third of the windshield on the driver's side. After talking to two Subaru dealers about it I've come to the conclusion that Subaru's service is terrible, in fact, I've had my vehicle serviced twice by a Subaru dealer for scheduled maintenance and they've gotten the tire pressure wrong both times on the "Multi-Point Inspection Report", which means I dropped my vehicle off with the correct tire pressure and they
deflated the front tire by 3 psi and the rear tire by 1 psi… it's like I'm paying for the exact opposite of service, it's like anti-service! When I told the service advisor over the phone that they got the tire pressure wrong he didn't believe me, so I told him to read the placard, so he put me on hold while he checked one of the vehicles on the lot. Of course I was right and they apologized for the mistake, but this wasn't a mistake, this is systematic incompetence where a Subaru technician
and the service advisor doesn't know the correct tire pressure for a 2012–2015 Impreza, who knows if they used the correct type of oil? Needless to say that they gave me some bull*** reason why the windshield washer pressure drops on the highway… sigh.
Anyway, still like the car.
