Scotty,
My wife and I moved to central Colorado where All Wheel Drive is at the very least beneficial in the winter. We rented a 2021 FWD Camry, driving it over 1,000 miles in varied conditions, and I am very impressed overall. However I would be nervous about the newness of the AWD configuration and what long term reliability might look like. My wife prefers the look and feel of the Outback, but I'm not a fan of CVTs, especially in mountain driving, and am skeptical of Subaru's overall long term reliability. Note that we keep our vehicles, historically Hondas and Toyotas, beyond 250k miles.
Subaru is king with AWD, they have perfected it. Their CVTs on their newer vehicles has gotten way better. They fixed the old head gasket issues and the ol boxers are overall very reliable. Me personally I wouldn’t hesitate to buy a newer Subaru. Toyota wouldn’t be bad either though. CVTs are what the Japanese auto manufacturers are going to. That’s a good thing though as traditionally speaking the Japanese actually care about fixing problems as they come up and they work on making their products better over time.
I agree that the traditional Japanese trend toward continuous improvement is real, I don't think that Subaru CVT's are at the point yet where they are as reliable long term to last 250K miles as appears to be the requirement for this buyer. The only two CVT's that Scotty recommends are the Toyota and the Honda. For $35K+ I would stick to a Toyota.
Toyota any day! Subarus are very popular there and in Michigan and have high resale value in those two markets, but Toyota would be the definite choice. Better built and more reliable.
If you replace your vehicle frequently like every 3-5 years, buy the Subaru Outback. If you want to keep it 10+ years, buy the Toyota Camry. I'm not saying that Subaru vehicles aren't reliable. My English professor has an Outback that's 10 years old with almost 400k miles on it. It has never given him a trouble. Of course, he has done maintenence regularly. But historically speaking, Toyota have a bigger reliability record.
Depends on what you want. If you value practicality, utility, AWD, and good resale value and decent reliability go with the Subaru. If you want a well built sedan that will be very reliable in years to come, decent AWD system, high resale value, then go with the Toyota.
