A Week With 2025 Subaru Outback Touring XT

When there’s heavy snow in the forecast, you want the Subaru Outback to be sure you get home safely. Our critic spent a week with the Touring XT trim package to see how it would handle and was greeted with a rare snow storm along the Oregon coast to check things out.

It’s the right car for serious winter driving.

When I learned that I would be picking up a 2025 Subaru Outback Touring XT at Portland International Airport, I breathed a silent prayer of thanks.

Snow was already falling when I flew back from an assignment and I needed to get over the coast mountain range to my home in Tillamook along the Oregon coast. There are many vehicles that are capable in the snow, but honestly, Subaru is the gold standard for the Pacific Northwest and other areas where snow can be a big challenge.

Overview

The Outback has been Subaru’s bread-and-butter crossover for 30 years. Originally introduced in 1995 as a trim level on the Legacy wagon, the Outback soon became its own model.

Throughout its production life, the Outback has remained popular with active buyers for its car-like handling, all-weather capability, and impressive cargo capacity. The Outback is perfect whether you’re headed to the mountains for a week of camping, to the ski slopes, or to the home supply store.

The current sixth generation Outback was introduced in 2019, and if rumors are true, the 2025 model year will be the last of this generation. But don’t go thinking that you need to wait. The 2025 Outback is up to date and exceptional.

Driving Impressions

Getting back to the ‘Mook can be intimidating for many drivers. Once you get about 20 miles west of Portland things can get dicey in bad weather. The roads are twisty, with blind corners and plenty of elevation changes. Bad for tourists but great for a local reviewer.

On this particularly drive home, the weather was perfectly suited to put the Outback to the test.

Heavy snow was almost no challenge at all, and I drove right by the semi-trucks as they were chaining up for the climb. Some other SUV drivers were giving up and turning around well before the summit, but for the Outback, it was just another road trip. This is a 365-day vehicle, and it’s comfortable, spacious, pleasant, responsive and powerful. There’s nothing not to love.

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Design

The Outback doesn’t need the kind of uber-macho styling you see on so many SUVs today. Call it a quiet confidence, because the Outback will prove its chops when the going gets tough. Outwardly, the Outback looks like a station wagon that’s been working out. It’s got brush protection where it needs to be, and a functional set of roof rails. But there’s no effort to look like something a third-world dictator would drive.

Our test model was the top Touring XT trim, with every tech and luxury feature. The seats are upholstered in durable Nappa leather, and they are heated and ventilated in front, and heated in the second row. There’s a large 11.6-inch center tablet for navigation and infotainment, playing through a Harman Kardon audio system.

My Outback Touring XT has some bulk to it, weighing in at 3,946 pounds and measuring 191.9 inches in length. It’s 75 inches wide, stands 67 inches tall and has a wheelbase of 108.1 inches

These numbers may matter even more: behind the second row you get 32.6 cubic feet of cargo area, or up to 75.6 cubic feet with the rear seat folded down. With the back seat folded down, you get 75 inches to the tailgate, so you don’t really need a roof tent. You can camp inside the Outback.

Powertrain

Under the hood, the Touring XT trim comes with Subaru’s 2.4-liter turbocharged engine paired with a Lineartronic continuously variable transmission and symmetrical all-wheel drive.

With 260 horsepower and 270 pound-feet of torque from the engine, the Outback is ready for anything Old Man Winter can offer. Of course it helps that my Subaru comes with X-mode, an extremely capable traction control system that allows the Outback to sail through just about any terrain.

Fuel economy is an EPA-estimated 22 mpg city, 29 on the highway. The combined rating is 25 mpg.

Safety and Technology

On the dash, the Outback features an 11.6-inch center display, which offers improved legibility and the capability to prominently show additional information to the driver, including map display and route guidance information. One great feature is that the heated/vented front seats are now controllable through the screen with dedicated virtual buttons that don’t disappear – so a heated or ventilated tushie is always within easy reach.

Another great feature for the Outback is the digital dashboard display – 12.3 inches of sharp, configurable driver information. It will display your navigation information, tunes, or performance gauges.

Also of note, the Outback includes Subaru’s EyeSight adaptive cruise and forward collision mitigation system.  I felt confident and safe on my drive, which was more than wishful thinking because the Outback is an IIHS Top Safety Pick, as it has been for every year since 2010. Subaru’s EyeSight is a big part of that, offering automatic emergency steering and braking. But I never needed to use either of those, because the Outback just drives through winter weather.

There’s also a selection of USB-C and USB-A ports, and a wireless device charger on the console. I turned on the radio, and it works. We even used CarPlay and listened to some tunes. Suffice to say the audio system is great, but this is a track-ready car so it’s less of a selling point.

Wrap Up

Wrapping up the Outback easy. There are nine trim levels starting at $29,010 all-in, while rolling up to $44,356 for the top-tier Touring XT trim. You can laser-point your purchase price with just the features you want, but honestly there’s very little reason not to aim for the top of the trim ladder and get a truly luxurious crossover.

Depending upon the trim package versions of the 2025 Subaru Outback are produced either in Lafayette, Indiana or in Ota, Gunma, Japan.

The 2025 models are now on sale in U.S. dealerships.