Even though Subaru banned “The Fast Lane Car” from getting press cars, they got one anyway.
You gotta love lowkey drama like this but Subaru had it coming. According to one of my favorite Youtube Car channels, The Fast Lane Car earlier this weekend (Aug. 19, 2018) despite Subaru putting The Fast Lane car on their press car blacklist years ago, they bypassed the press junket altogether and bought one instead. Check out their video below, it’s quite the subtle middle finger (in my opinion) to Subaru.
You can fast forward to the juicy bit at around 6:00 where Roman gets into “the tea” between Subaru and TFL Car but basically Subaru got really upset that TFL Car damaged one of their Subaru Outback press cars they lent them when TFL Car took it up a very steep hill.
To be fair, TFL Car did scratch up the paint in several places and ended up revealing the inconvenient truth about these AWD Subarus with a CVT, that their ECU will cut power to their AWD system if the current conditions can possibly damage the transmission.
But here’s where the drama really began. I’m assuming before Subaru even SAW their video review about their Outback’s failed attempt at scrambling up this Colorado hill, they did the unthinkable. In addition to an Outback, Subaru at the time lent TFL Car a BRZ and WRX, both at their personal homes. Subaru Fleet employees, unbeknownst to TFL Staff, drove to their personal homes and took back their cars.
I felt that was very unprofessional. Then I got a call from Subaru and they said, “Hey, you scratched up this car and you inconvenienced the next journalist…” And that began this whole five or six year saga.
Roman does bring up a good point that Subaru sells a lot of their cars in Colorado, and by starting this whole drama, they’re doing a disservice to their demographic by not allowing arguably the biggest car reviewers on the Internet in their home market access to their vehicles.
But, jokes on them because they legally can’t stop TFL Car from buying one, which they’ve done. And from the looks of things, they’ve already filmed it crawling up one of their test hills.
Spoiler alert, it doesn’t look good.
So, major props to TFL Car for sticking out their necks and rectifying the situation as best they can. Subarus have a good resale value so they’ll definitely get a significant chunk of their money back when they resell it. And, you’ll have all that sweet footage showing what these Subarus can or can’t do.
I look forward to the update videos.
