First Drive Review
Subaru really wanted us (and you) to know two things about its 2014 XV Crosstrek hybrid, its first gas-electric car. One: It has 8.7 inches of ground clearance (the same as the nonhybrid XV Crosstrek, by the way). And two: Toyota, Subaru’s occasional strategic partner and the BRZ’s baby daddy, had nothing at all to do with the development of this hybrid powertrain. No, nothing.
Feeling this to be sufficient instruction, Subaru then piled auto writers into brand-new XV Crosstrek hybrids (can we talk about that name later?) and sent them through the inland trails and nontrails and “seriously, just don’t go theres” of Iceland. In November. Did we mention Iceland?
Here is a thing you should not do with your 2014 Subaru XV Crosstrek hybrid: drive across the freaky Mars-scape of Iceland with its hard-packed volcanic dust liberally strewn with black rock shards, sulfur-stinky hot springs, river crossings of an impossibly cold slurry roughly the fording depth of one Subaru hood, and tracks bordered by snow walls tall enough to allow the braver and more idiotic of us to go glancing, like life-size Hot Wheels cars, off walls and occasionally one another in the hope of not getting stuck. And so it is that Subaru finds itself with about 10 of these niche-within-a-niche-within-a-niche little hybrid runabouts with mangled front fascias, bashed panels, and various other ailments not immediately apparent.
After a long day of this thrashing, Subaru and its hired guides called in a snowplow to guide its poor little cars out of the wilderness as darkness fell. The plow was an enormous tractor with six-foot-tall rear tires, a closed cabin, and snow chains. It, too, got stuck in the snow.
No part of this adventure made any sense whatsoever, but it did provide us the opportunity to sleep in a place called Landmannalaugar, eat part of a horse, and achieve an indicated 18 mpg in a small four-wheel-drive hybrid.
Crossbred for Micro-Variegated Climates
A hybrid that is rated at 29/33 mpg on the EPA cycle (only 3 mpg better combined than that of its $3000-cheaper nonhybrid brother) doesn’t make a whole helluva lot of sense, either. Still, we anticipate that this model, with its 13-hp electric motor jammed into its CVT and a former spare-tire well now filled with an 0.6-kWh nickel-metal-hydride battery pack, will sell in places where the atmospheric and political climates favor a hybrid-badged Subaru (we’re looking at you, Boulder, Colorado).
