2008 Subaru Outback – WTF moment

So yea, we’re in Evanston, Illinois. We got here via the nice folks at Air Trans and the flights were relatively uneventful – though on the first leg my seatmate was a drunk offensive man and I am thankful that the trip was only 45 minutes and that he fell into a drunk slumber right after take off.

At the Chicago Midway airport (which we flew into only because TW hates O’Hare) the woman at the Hertz car rental desk was very very sweet and very very confused about why we would ever consider moving to her neck of the woods from Florida. Her exact words were “Are you crazy?” Yea. Pretty much but here we are.

I had reserved a tiny car from Hertz, the reservation says “Hyundai Accent” or similar. Small, easy to park, good on gas for all of the house hunting and touring of our new neighborhood. That was my goal.

She handed me the paperwork, I looked down and I saw “Outback” and I thought – “Huh? What’s an Outback?” (I know, I’m clueless…) I walk over to the baggage conveyor belt thingy and show it to TW, she said “What’s an Outback?” and then she said “Ohhh it’s the brother to my little blue car.” Duh. Yes. A Subaru Outback, of course! My next thoughts came back to haunt me…

Cool. Since it’s a Subaru, we’ll probably feel more comfortable riding in it and driving in it than we would another kind of car that we don’t have any experience with.

We find the car. We get in. I look around at some of the controls. Adjust some mirrors. Adjust my seat. I turn on the car. It has a weird red security light on – but that goes off. I put it in drive and there’s a weird red “1” with an “up arrow” next to it. Uh. What’s that? I drive through the parking garage, glancing down at this red “1”. I pull out of the parking garage, still looking at the red “1”. I pull out onto a busy street, still looking at this red “1”. I drive. Red 1.

I feel like the transmission wants me to shift. But. This is an automatic. How the hell do you shift an automatic? There’s nothing that says “over drive” or anything LIKE that. The traffic was bumper to bumper so that transmission revving noise was minimal until I merge onto the freeway, where it’s still bumper to bumper but now b2b going 30 and the transmission really wants me to shift.

So. TW suggested I shift.

I tentatively push the gear and that red 1 changed to a red 2 with an up arrow and a down arrow! And there was no more transmission complaining noises.

Then, I get to drive a little faster… and the transmission wants me to shift again! So tentatively hit the gear again and it moves to a red 3 with an up arrow and a down arrow. WTF?

Four gears. In an automatic. And it drove me infreakingsane for about a half hour because who the hell pushes a gear up to shift into second gear? You shift DOWN for second gear and DOWN for fourth gear! 30 minutes of crazy, those gears drove me crazy.

Thank goodness TW found the Subaru Outbook manual hidden in its secret compartment and discovered how to turn those gear thingies OFF. I love a manual transmission but that thing was not a manual transmission. It was an automatic. There was no clutch. If there is no clutch there should be no freaking gears. And you should NEVER have to shift UP to get to second. EVER. For any reason.

Other than that, I like the Outback.

(for the record, that shifty thingy is called the sportshift)