[geeks] electric cars

[velociraptor]

On 10/24/06, Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
> Subaru also offers AWD on several models.
>
> Does anyone know how well they hold up or how well their system works?
>
> I drove an AWD WRX with the Japanese conversion (a kit to remove a lot
> of the US restrictions on the engine) and it was a lot of fun.  My
> biggest complaint was the interior didn't look that great, and I
> wondered how well it held up.

We had a Subaru Forrester (iirc, it was an '02).  I liked it well
enough but the husband-unit did not, though he never really explained
what he didn't like about it.  The AWD was pretty solid from what I
could tell (I haven't driven any other AWD).  While we were in Tahoe,
he found a snow-covered empty parking lot and played around with it,
and found it satisfactory.  Note that he grew up in northern Alberta,
so has plenty of snow/ice driving experience, and has driven other AWD
vehicles.

As far as the transmission/linkage itself went, it was one of the
"between years" when Subaru stopped using the hill-holder clutch
(which received so many complaints that they put it back in
apparently).  Ours was a PITA to get off an incline with the nose low
using reverse.  The clutch would immediately started heating up from
slippage in that situation. I don't know if this was just a problem
with our vehicle, or a broader issue.  It was a rare enough occurence
that we never had it checked out.

We knew a couple of hobbiest rally guys in CA, and they claimed that
Subaru put a different transmission in the competition cars than the
ones sold to the public.  They also claimed the stock trannies to be
"glass"--i.e. highly susceptible to damage.  I say "claimed" because I
didn't know them well enough to know if they were talking out their
a$$ or not.

Doesn't VW offer the Passat in a manual/AWD model anymore?  We
contemplated that for the one we owned prior to the Forrester.

(I hate automatics, too.  It's another thing making the search for a
diesel Golf more difficult.)

=Nadine=