Subaru CVT review

Anybody drive one of the new Subaru CVT transmissions yet?

Weird! So strange not to feel the gears shift at all.

But what's really crazy is how absoluletly everything is now tied into the computer.

Drove a 2011 Outback today (dealer gave my wife a brand new loaner as they messed up some of her warranty work). The friggen parking brake is now essentially a little push/pull button on the dash. You click it, and you can hear a set of servo motors go to work and the brake engages. The rear hatch release is now a small little computer controlled button release too.

I swear, not one thing on cars is going to be manual mechanical in a few years. Like it or not, the car of the future is one big computer. Now the question is ... when will the first virus appear?

Also of note are the paddle shifters on the wheel. The CVT has two modes - M & D. D is fully automatic. M allows you to manually paddle shift through a set of predefined locales on the CVT that are supposed to give you the sensation of shifting through gears. Of course, it's all just smoke and mirrors, as there are not such things as gears in a CVT and if you switch to M but don't use the paddles in a way the computer accepts, it overrides and still behaves like an automatic .. it doesn't actually hold "gear". Not for very long at least.

Of course the advantage of the CVT .. and the reason everyone is headed that way .. is the awesome highway gas mileage they produce. Subaru's 2012 Impreza is slated to get 36 mpg highway (though still only 23 city). Still, that's a major increase over conventional numbers (up from 27 in the current model year .. up from 20 city). BUt I cannot imagine a CVT in a Tacoma .. not in the least.

 

I sell it all day long at Nissan. I didn't know subaru had it now...

It's a great for fuel economy, as well as comfort.
no idea about the subaru, but the nissan cvt is tough as nails!

 

My '07 SE-R had CVT with Paddle shifters. Such a fun car, too bad the quality was non existent.

 

My Camry Hybrid has a CVT. The only complaint that I have read (about CVT's in general) is the noise under acceleration; kind of a droning sound. It doesn't bother me but some people are turned off by it. I like the linear feel of the acceleration. I don't know how much of the MPGs are due to the CVT and how much the hybrid system but I get 37-42 MPG in mixed driving all day long.

 

Subaru was one of the first to launch a CVT ... way back in the Justy in the 1989. But it used a "push-belt" system that proved unreliable (belts stretched and broke) and wasn't well received stateside.

The new "Lineartronic" CVTs are a metal belt pulley-based system ... supposedly pretty bulletproof. I hope ... rumor has it replacing the CVT costs around $6000. Still not the highest price though ... supposedly the Prius "ECVT" tranny is $8000 to replace .. yowza.

 

My buddy had a '10 Subaru Legacy...it was a very high trim, and it had CVT. After about 1 year of driving it he said he couldn't stand the throttle response with the CVT, and traded it in for a Corolla S.

Don't take his word for it, though. In the same year, he bought a 98 Supra, and a Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4. And last week he traded in the Corolla for a Tundra.

But yeah I drove the Legacy, and I must say it's a pretty slick Daily Driver.

 

My buddy's altima has it and yea I can of laugh when it just hang on the high end of the rpm when flooring it. But driving normally it drone a lot because the cvt is constantly changing ratios for maximum efficiency.

 

oh god i hate driving a car with a cvt...lol...but i gotta say the initial acceleration from a "downshift" is pretty good...always the perfect "gear" lol

still sounds like your driving a moped tho

 

My wifes altima has it and im not a big fan of it. Feels like its never at the right rpm. Also going down hills it wants to "downshift and will not coast like I think it should.

 

Yeah it kind of scared my wife when she gassed it, and the RPMs soared to over 5000 almost immediately.

 

doubt they'd put that shit in the WRX or STi or even the Legacy GTs or spec.bs

 

All that and on 87 octane reg gas

 

http://www.subaru.com/engineering/transmission.html
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