Short Take Road Test
It's all very embarrassing. It's as if Subaru had walked out of a public bathroom with a long stretch of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of its shoe. The company is so affable, so accommodating, so tidily, if curiously, attired, that you just don't feel right saying anything.
Our past experience with the company led us to believe it was the kind that habitually checked its hair, double-checked that its fly was securely zippered, and scanned its teeth for bits of wedged spinach before making an entrance. It would normally drop off cars at our parking lot in excellent working order and thoroughly washed. But here it is: A Subaru Baja Turbo, resplendent in dark brown with a heavy metallic flake that looks neither brown nor metallic, but then you get right up on it, and- ohmigod-Subaru's somehow forgotten to attach the trunklid to this otherwise pleasant sedan. Listen, we're not going to be the ones to mention it. Better just to smile dumbly and nod and carry on with it. But it ain't like other people didn't notice it. Passersby did refrain from ridiculing us viciously as we ambled about town in our Baja. Something we wish we could say about our debilitating experience driving a Suzuki X-90 in the mid-'90s.
Funny-looking though the Baja might be-with its behind all exposed like that-at least the Turbo, the third version of this curious contraption, has some muscle.
The Baja Turbo is the newest in a line of improbable Subarus to be fitted with a turbocharged 2.5-liter flat-four engine making a credible 210 horsepower and an impressive 235 pound-feet of torque. That engine, a detuned version of the motor in the silly-quick Impreza WRX STi, has also been fitted to the oddball Forester cube-ute. With a five-speed manual transmission, that little Forester 2.5XT sprinted from 0 to 60 mph in a stunning 5.3 seconds.
Ah, but we were talking about the Baja. The 3751-pound Baja Turbo is less quick, owing to its greater weight and our test car's four-speed automatic. Still, at 7.3 seconds, it's quicker by two full seconds to 60 mph than a standard Baja equipped with a five-speed manual. Further, the Baja Turbo would be quicker than any of its competitors. If, that is, it had any competitors.
Subaru expects to offer a five-speed manual transmission in a decontented Baja Turbo (with cloth seats), but as we went to press, the company wasn't quite sure about that. If it is offered and we test it, it will be quicker. And as with any four-door car/quasi-pickup, top speed is critically important. The Turbo will circle the racetrack at 130 mph, leaving a Baja with the naturally aspirated four wheezing away at an insufficient 119 mph.
All right, so you don't really care about the Turbo's top speed. What you will care about in real-world driving is the 2.5-liter turbo's smooth, torquey power. The naturally aspirated 165-hp motor feels weak at low revs when you call on it to move that standard Baja's 3581 pounds. The Turbo, thanks largely to a variable-valve-timing system that the standard engine lacks, delivers its peak torque (an additional 69 pound-feet) at 400 fewer rpm. The only faux pas in the powertrain's performance is the automatic transmission that is reluctant to downshift. And when it does finally shift-up or down-it doesn't do it smoothly. The automatic comes standard with a manual-shifting feature that allows you to get your gearchange whenever you please. But with only four gear ratios-necessarily widely spaced-it ain't that much fun to play with.
Relatively slow sales of the Baja convinced Subaru that it needed to make the car look a bit more butch. So, using taller springs and shocks and an exhaust tucked closer to the body, Subaru has increased the Baja's ground clearance by slightly more than an inch to 8.4. We're not sure it looks any tougher or less goofy, but at least the increased height hasn't adversely affected the car's respectable skidpad and braking performance (0.75 g and 190 feet from 70 to 0 mph).
All this will cost you. Well, Subaru is also not sure about that. But figure about $27,500 for a well-equipped Turbo such as our tester. The Baja Turbo goes on sale late this fall and will be, for a while, the only Legacy-based vehicle offered with a turbo motor. By next summer Subaru will begin selling a substantially reworked Legacy sedan with the turbo, and we've been led to believe it will come standard with a full-coverage trunklid.
-Daniel Pund
