Ok, I am going to out myself as a lesbian here....I have an Outback at my place in Montana. For the most part it's for getting around town, but I also use it to get to my hunting cabin. I have an F150 as well, but the Subrau has won me over for most needs. The Outback we have is the 6 cylinder and it actually has pretty good power and MPG. My sister has the 4 cylinder Outback and it actually is not bad on power and gets better MPG. I have something of a leadfoot, though, and for the long stretches of road in the state where I can get by with triple digit speeds, I like the extra power of the 6.
Here's the thing I didn't expect with the Subaru...it's a really good vehicle for many off road conditions. It won't crawl through water obstacles or climb rocks, but for ranch roads and trails, it's amazing. It has something called X Mode that is a lot like how a Jeep will basically walk itself over obstacles at low speeds, without having to ride brakes, and that has been very useful. The stock tires on the Subaru were awful for off road use, though, and I swapped them out for Geolanders after the second tires puncture in the first 800 miles of driving the car. With the better tires, the Subaru is hard to stop.
I've use the Subaru to haul all of my hunting gear, plus my brother's, plus a field dressed mule deer, and it was very comfortable.
It's too early to talk reliability, as we just got the Subaru a year ago and have only put about 10,000 miles on it. I've heard people complaining about the head unit for the nav/radio/etc, but we've not had that problem. The OEM battery also sucks, but that was an easy fix. Otherwise, it's an efficient, comfortable and pretty tough vehicle, especially in the snow.
