Subaru Tribeca 2005 Review

Subaru B9 Tribeca

lane-faced, made in the USA, and with three rows of seats, the B9 Tribeca will be the strangest thing Australians have seen behind a Subaru badge in ages. It's true that the company was once prone to exuberant weirdness, but those days are long gone. For more than a decade now, sense has prevailed, and Australians have grown to respect Subaru's compact line-up of sedans, wagons and crossovers with horizontally opposed engines and all-wheel drive. Sales have climbed from around 27,000 in '01 to 33,619 last year.

The difference between past and present is that, unlike, say, the Vortex coupe, the B9 Tribeca isn't the answer to a question that no-one asked. In fact, it is the answer to a dilemma that faces many Subaru loyalists. What do they move on to when needs dictate something with more size and seats than a Liberty or Outback? Until the B9 Tribeca's arrival, the answer would always be Another Brand.

Naturally, Subaru Australia would like to see its first boat-load of B9 Tribecas sometime right about now. Instead, they're going to have to wait. More than a year, at the very least.

The B9 Tribeca was designed primarily for the massive, wealthy and crossover-hungry American market, so it makes sense to manufacture it where the majority will be sold. A natural consequence is that the left-hand drive version gets production priority in the plant in Lafayette, Indiana. In the past, Australia's Subarus have all come from right-hand drive Japan. There's been little waiting. Not this time. If everything goes just right, the B9 Tribeca could go on sale here in October next year, says Subaru Australia chairman Trevor Amery. If there are hitches, the car's launch easily could be delayed until sometime early in 2007.

FLYING STYLE
By the time it arrives, whenever that may be, other models in the Subaru range will have had versions of the company's new design identity grafted on at facelift time. The B9 Tribeca isn't even the first all-new model to be designed from a clean sheet with the look - that distinction belongs to the little Japan domestic market R2 mini car - but it will be Australia's first real taste of the flavour created for Subaru by its new design boss, Greek-born former Alfa Romeo style chief Andreas Zapatinas.

The front-end theme is an acknowledgement of the company's aero heritage. If you don't get it at first glance, try to imagine a single-engined plane - perhaps a WWII ‘Kate' carrier-based torpedo bomber, made by Subaru's direct ancestor Nakajima, which proved memorably effective one day in December of 1941 - heading straight at you. The central section of the grille represents a cross-section of the plane's fuselage, and the chrome bars spreading left and right its wings. If you think it also happens to looks a little Alfa-esque, well, wait until you see the rear - the shallow vee in the bottom edge of the rear screen, the shape of the tail-light clusters...

Whether you find the B9 Tribeca's design detailing blatantly derivative or brilliantly attractive, its proportions work quite well in the metal. It stands quite tall and there's a fair amount of air beneath - claimed clearance is 213mm - thanks in part to the 18-inch wheel/tyre package. While the body looks like something caught halfway through morphing from SUV into MPV, the key visual relationships - wheel to body, wheelbase to overall length, underbody clearance to body
depth - are all okay.

The novel appearance does make it tough to judge the Subaru's true size from photographs. Compared with a Territory, for instance, the B9 Tribeca is a little shorter overall (by 34mm); much shorter in wheelbase (by 93mm); slightly narrower (by 20mm), but a fraction taller (by 10mm).

Beneath the B9 Tribeca is a mixture of familiar and fresh technology. Its 3.0-litre horizontally opposed six-cylinder engine, five-speed automatic transmission and all-wheel drive system are the same as the range-topping Liberty and Outback models. The strut and A-arm front suspension is based on the Outback's, but much was altered. For the B9 Tribeca, a larger-diameter strut body was specified, the A-arms were strengthened, and the stiffness of the entire assembly increased.
At the rear, there's a brand-new, B9 Tribeca-specific multi-link suspension.

NEW COURSE
The need for the clean-sheet design was dictated by two factors. First, the suspension had to be compact, so the B9 Tribeca's third-row seat could be sat directly above it with a reasonable amount of headroom for the two passengers. Secondly, the engineers wanted a suspension that delivered more travel than the Outback because they wanted the B9 Tribeca to ride better.

Clamber into the Subaru's third-row seat, and it's soon clear how important the low-rise rear
suspension is. Although the cushion is very close to the floor, headroom is tight for a medium-size adult. If there was much less space, it would be hard to persuade even smaller children to sit back there.

In contrast, the second-row seat is rather good. It's a little unusual, too, in that the backrest is split into three sections - 40/20/40 - while the cushion is divided 60/40. There's a good range of fore-aft adjustment provided, presumably to provide for the relief of knees-up sufferers stuck back in the B9 Tribeca's third-row seat. Slid to the rearmost limit of its travel, the second-row seat provides plenty of room. The seat itself is well shaped and sized for comfort.

The front seats are pretty fine, too, except for slightly-too-soft side bolsters. Driver and passenger face an instrument panel that swoops smoothly into a tapering centre stack that contains controls for audio, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning. The deep-set major instruments are flanked by odd-looking, electroluminescent coolant and fuel gauges.

The overall effect is Lexus-like, but a little cooler, more technical and less lush. The quality of materials and standard of fit is high. It needs to be, if the B9 Tribeca is to compete with the likes of the RX330. It's likely the Subaru will wear a similar size pricetag when it reaches Australia.

On the roads of northern California, where Subaru chose to first show the B9 Tribeca to the world's motoring media, it's soon apparent that it's a much more capable car, dynamically, than the refined
but tangle-footed Lexus.

Although its suspension calibration is clearly biased to ride comfort, and despite its rack and pinion steering being low-geared, the B9 Tribeca was confident on winding roads north of San Francisco and the Napa Valley. It's quite well balanced, with a tendency to gentle understeer at the limit. The Subaru's electronically controlled chassis-stability system - labelled VDC for vehicle dynamics control - intervenes early and deftly to arrest front-tyre slippage. It's quite subtle, which is a marked contrast to the beeping, over-reactive electronic nanny that Lexus installs in the RX330.

X5 BOMBER
During development of the B9 Tribeca, Subaru's engineers chose the BMW X5 as their dynamic benchmark. While its handling is not as sharp, there's no doubt the B9 Tribeca rides better than the
Bavarian. It's a well-chosen trade-off.

The Subaru's refinement is excellent. There's little noise from either the drivetrain or the chassis. It's smooth-as, too, as it should be with a perfectly balanced flat-six engine.

If the B9 Tribeca has an obvious shortcoming, it's performance. Subaru quotes a 1925kg kerb weight, or around 250kg more than an Outback 3.0R. The additional burden is evident. Even with only two aboard, the B9 Tribeca's engine has to work hard. With a full complement of seven aboard, it could be sluggish.

It would help if the automatic's electronic brainbox were a little smarter. Especially on long freeway inclines, the five-speeder dithers, repeatedly changing up only to find that it can't cope with the slope in the higher gear... and downshifting. Subaru's engineers admit they're considering a more powerful engine for the B9 Tribeca. A larger engine and a better-behaved transmission
would both be welcome.

For those who've arrived at a time in life where a seven-seater is required, and don't mind that the third-row is a children-only affair, the B9 Tribeca works quite well. And that's not strange at all...