2026 Subaru Outback.

It’s time again for a brand new Subaru Outback. And it is also time to be reminded how horrible Subaru is a designing cars.

While the new 2026 still looks a bit like a wagon, it could very well be the worst-looking wagon of all time. Just when you thought they had reached peak “Cladding climax”, they prove you wrong. As it seems they doubled down on the crappy looking plastic trim for 2026. It now looks like a disease that cannot be stopped, like trust. It’s everywhere, taking over the whole design.

The new super fake and cheap-looking plastic grille is particularly ghastly and obnoxious. Again, worse than ever before. The 2026 Subaru Outback front end could very well be the ugliest car offered today.

Besides this, the new Outback will still come in Premium, Limited, Touring, Limited XT, Touring XT, and Wilderness trims. Which is just too many if you ask me. Calling the super basic model “Premium” is just plain odd anyway.

Subaru describes the new interior design as “calmer, clean line”. OK…

I’m not sure it is such an improvement over the current interior, which was always pretty nice. The new one is a bit more generic, and dare I say, a bit more “Toyota-like”.

It’s basically the same car as before, with a new design on top. Engines are the same, with a base 2.4-liter with 180HP, or a turbo version with 260HP. No hybrid here.

To Subaru, it doesn’t matter what we think of the Outback. Or how ugly it has become. Numbers are king, and they sold almost 170,000 of them last year. Subaru buyers don’t seem to be put off by these horrible designs.

However, it is interesting to notice that the current generation has not been as popular as the previous one. We’ll see if the switch to “100% ugly” will make the car even more popular or not…