– By David Brown –
When Subaru’s Australian Managing Director, Nick Senior, launched their new Levorg vehicle in June this year, he mentioned a new service they are introducing. I could find no road tests in the media that mentioned this service yet it might be beneficial to fleet operations as well as the private buyer.
They have introduced mobile service vans. This is not a new concept but it will be a chance for an owner to keep an active relationship with the dealership, including having regular manufacturer’s services, without having the hassle of delivering and then picking up the car. For a sizable fleet, the economies of scale would be particularly useful.
There will be an additional, but not exorbitant, cost on top of the normal service but David Rowley, Subaru’s National Corporate Affairs Manager, said that they are just putting their toe in the water to see how much interest there is and what potential there is for the future.
They only have two vans at this stage, one in Sydney and one called “Subaru Do” which has a more flexible territory. They anticipate ramping up the availability and marketing of this service over the coming months and will review the situation in six to twelve months time.
The other aspect that is very important to the efficient operation of fleets is road safety and Subaru says their EyeSight collision avoidance system has produced very positive results when used in an Australia fleet situation.
The EyeSight system was first introduced in 2008 in the Japanese-spec Legacy. EyeSight is a different technology basically using two cameras on either side of the vehicle to develop a three dimensional effect similar to the way humans use two eyes to be able to sense not only height and width but also depth.
Subaru has continued to develop EyeSight and the Levorg has the third generation of the system with higher resolution than the conventional CCD, enabling recognition of even low-contrast objects. It also provides greater field of vision and clarity.
The features of the complete EyeSight Driver Assist System include: brake light recognition; pre-collision steering assist; adaptive cruise control; lane departure warning; lane sway warning; lead vehicle start alert; pre-collision braking system; pre-collision brake assist and pre-collision throttle management.
Subaru has reported on a large fleet in Victoria that used vehicles with EyeSIght, over an 18 month period, where they reduced accidents by around 85%.
As far as the car itself goes, the Levorg could suit some fleets because it is a station wagon and thus has good, useable space, but it also has a sporty edge.
Subaru established a high performance image with the WRX rally cars although more recently some of the cars in its range are sluggish. The XV SUV, for example, struggles with power.
The Levorg hopes to reignite the performance perception in their more practical vehicles without having to go to the racy looking WRX/STI and is this way the Levorg is seen as the spiritual successor of the Liberty GT wagon. It uses the same 197Kw four cylinder turbo-charged engine from the WRX. It only comes with a Continually Variable Transmission (CVT) which is not my favourite gearbox, but they are getting better and this one is pretty good by today’s standards.
The 2.0GT base model starts at starts at $42,990; the middle level 2.0GT-S at $48,890 and the additional option of the 2.0GT-S Spec B comes in at $52,890. All models have the same specification engine and, being a Subaru, come with all-wheel drive. It’s a bit pricy but there is not a lot of choice for wagons below a $50,000 price tag. There are more options if you go to the more luxury models on the market.
The name Levorg is a portmanteau of three words, LEgacy, reVOlution, touRinG. Knowing this doesn’t make it any more pleasant. One wag noted that Levorg backwards, spells grovel.
The mobile Service feature and the EyeSight safety package are available for other Subaru vehicles.
