Rental Car Review - 2019 Subaru Levorg (STI)

[Yw-slayer]

TLDR Version: Good fun, great seats, adequate handling, and enough toys to make touring Hokkaido fun and practical. Highly recommended.

Rented from Nippon-Rent-a-Car (via Tocoo.jp) at New Chitorse Airport, Hokkaido. Needed to haul 2 adults around Hokkaido - Airport to Furano, then west to Jozankei for some onsen action, then back to the airport. The STI is more a model with STI trim, so slightly better wheels, cool interior etc. but no major power upgrades.

Engine and transmission: 1.6L Turbo petrol with 170hp, CVT gearbox (there is a 300hp Levorg STI, but I'm sure this wasn't it). Got in with around 5200km on the clock, so almost brand new, and left it with nearer 5600km I think. Decent power and grunt around town. Fine at higher revs and fun and just enough overtaking power in Sport mode - you can pick via the steering wheel - for Hokkaido's fun mixture of roads. But the CVT isn't (like the car) really set up for super crazy mad driving fun. I would just use Sport for overtaking or corners, then shift back to Intelligent the rest of the time to save petrol. "Shifting" was fine but I didn't really feel the need to use the paddles.

Steering and Handling: This is a Car came I think on 17s. It felt slightly nose-heavy and unsurprisingly similar to our 2006 BL Legacy (which is on STI springs), but with a bigger steering wheel and less feedback. You see some reviews which mention that the suspension seems a bit unsettled over rough roads - they are not incorrect. I think this is because it's tuned more for some sort of "comfort" rather than ultimate crazy mad driving fun. But you can still feel it rotating a bit when going into corners at reasonably high speeds.

Interior: Great stuff, full Japanese (but Eng language possible) satnav with AUX cable. No sunroof. Black and brown leather seats embossed with the STI logo which always remained comfortable, cool, and supportive for many hours. Fun central display with lots of random info to flip through, acceptable decent stereo. A good place to spend many hours, no matter the road, which is what we did.

Practicality: Pretty good, cubbies in the sides of the door were useful too. Headlights turning with steering were very useful on very dark Japanese countryside roads.

Looks: Decent in white. Of course, much more action and stylo than all of the other rentals I saw, including non-STI trim Levorgs.

Other stuff: Car nice and compact. It really does feel somewhere between the old WRX wagon and the BL-generation Legacy wagon.

Verdict: A+ for Subie fans, probably B+ for most other people. Probably the most fun rental I've ever had, save for the Corvette.

See attached photos.2018-06-29 12.29.43.jpg2018-06-26 17.53.35.jpg2018-06-26 17.56.37.jpg2018-06-26 17.56.05.jpg

[Alan P]

Grovel backwards.

[George]

Neat. Looks like what they call a Subaru Impreza over here.

[Random]

Except they declined to bring over the fast wagon. Bastards.