Would suit:
Sorry, no idea.
Price:
£28 995 (seven-seater £33 995).
Performance:
121mph, 0-100km/h 9.3sec.
General fuel consumption:
12.33 litres/100km/h.
By Michael Booth
Car companies, if they don't use numbers when naming their latest models, usually aim for something aspirational, something evoking freedom, power, prosperity. Vanquish, Grand Voyager or, you know, Pluriel.
But not Subaru, oh no. The inscrutable Subaristes are operate on an entirely different sub-conscious level. By naming their new off-roader B9 ("benign", geddit?) they presumably hope to counter by stealth the prevailing hostility to SUV's - call it auto-suggestion.
And, to give it a bit of a hip spin, they added "Tribeca", for no good reason other than it's the name of a trendy district of New York where Robert De Niro and Naomi Campbell spend their time eating fusion food or brutalising PA's.
It recalls the mangled, Westernised names they sometimes give cars in Japan, such as the Mazda Bongo Friendee, Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear or the Nissan Cup-a-Soup Flange Wagon.
Talk of the B9's odd name has overshadowed what an ugly, stupid, pretentious waste of time, money and resources it otherwise represents. It has a face that only a mother could love - Subaru's freakish new corporate face, care of Joan Rivers' plastic surgeon - but beyond that, beyond the silly name, beyond the dubious socio-political implications of owning a three-litre, petrol-engined behemoth (on the UK market, only the Audi Q7 is bigger) designed entirely with urban use in mind while fraudulently touting all-terrain ability.
If you can see past all that, then the new Subaru is really quite a pudding.
The interior is well made and equipped but, compared to previous Subarus, a 1974 Hillman Avenger would look great and, no matter how improved the quality of materials may be, you have to ask yourself why it was felt that fully grown adults would want a cabin that looks like a space ship.
The Honda Civic suffers from the same kind of "Buck Rogers" approach to both its interior and exterior design. Just how infantile do car designers think we are?
Infantile enough to buy Chrysler PT Cruisers by their thousands, I suppose, but at least that has an "American Graffiti" charm. The B9 is more Japanese graffiti - eyesore and incomprehensible.
The automatic gearbox is too hasty to kick down and that, to me, often suggests a maker's lack of confidence in the engine. And you have no choice: no manual option. This hardly improves the B9's most un-Subaru-like acceleration but, if you are hoping that nugatory performance means it is easier on the environment, you'd be wrong.
Disorientated penguins
There's no diesel option, either, and the petrol engine has an average fuel consumption of more than 12 lites/100km, which should ensure the B9 goes straight to the top of the SUV hate list.
This is the kind of car that, a decade or so from now, when we are wading knee-deep in melted ice as we attempt to clear the inner cities of disorientated penguins, will mean we'll look back on the rise of the SUV as a crazed 2007 abhorrence that we would all much rather forget
And note that the B9 was originally intended to be a Saab. It is the Swedish company's great fortune that GM's parlous financial state meant that never happened but equally a shame that another noble brand has been forced to pick up the unedifying pieces of the project. - The Independent, London