2026 Subaru Outback Wilderness Priced for Australia: Turbo Boxer Returns From $59,690

Image credit: Subaru Australia

For about a decade, the Outback has been the answer to a very Australian question: I want a wagon, I want to tow a camper trailer to a national park, and I do not want to drive something the size of a Kluger. The seventh-generation car keeps that brief but reshapes it. The shape is taller and squarer, the XT trim is gone, and the turbo boxer now lives only in a new pair of Wilderness grades that open at $59,690 before on-road costs. If you have been waiting for a more honest off-road Outback, this is the most committed one Subaru has ever sold here.

Subaru Australia has dropped pricing for the full five-grade lineup and confirmed first customer deliveries from the second quarter of 2026. Demo cars are already in showrooms.

Pricing by Powertrain

The range splits cleanly down the middle. The lower three grades carry over the 2.5-litre naturally aspirated boxer. The two Wilderness grades get the 2.4-litre turbo that used to live in the XT.

Base price is up around $4,800 on the outgoing equivalent, and the Wilderness pair effectively step in where the Outback Sport and XT Touring used to sit. The mechanical headline is the turbo, but the more interesting one is what Subaru has done to make the Wilderness actually capable.

Specs at a Glance

What the Turbo Wilderness Actually Changes

The 2.4-litre turbo flat-four picks up about 11kW and 32Nm on the engine it replaces, which is not a huge jump on paper. The hardware around it does more of the heavy lifting. The Wilderness rolls on its own suspension tune with electronically controlled ZF-sourced dampers, a first for the brand here. Subaru pairs that with what it calls Active Torque Split 4 (ACT-4) on the AWD system and a shorter final drive ratio, so the engine sits in a more useful part of its torque curve when you need to climb something steep or wade through long-grass tracks. The X-Mode driving modes have been retuned to match.

Outside, you get black wheel arch flares, blacked-out mirror caps, badging trim and bumpers reshaped for better approach and departure angles. Ground clearance lifts to 240mm, up from 213mm on the rest of the range, which is meaningful when you are crossing washouts on a Pilbara service road or a rutted-up forest track at the back of Kosciuszko.

One trade-off is worth flagging. Braked towing on the Wilderness drops to 2,100kg, down 300kg on what the old XT could pull. The naturally aspirated 2.5-litre grades hold at 2,400kg. So if you are buying an Outback to lug a 2.3-tonne caravan, the cheaper 2.5L Touring keeps that ability while the Wilderness gives it up to gain the off-road hardware.

Inside, Cabin, Tech

The cabin gets a full rework. There is a new 12.1-inch portrait touchscreen running Subaru's latest software with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a 12.3-inch driver display, and a refreshed climate cluster that brings back proper hard buttons for the things you reach for while driving. Sound is a 12-speaker Harman/Kardon system on the higher grades. Boot space lifts modestly with the rear seats up and adds roughly 30 litres with them folded compared to the outgoing car, mostly because the new body is taller.

Wilderness adds copper-coloured interior accents, water-resistant StarTex upholstery and roof rails rated for static and dynamic loads suited to rooftop tents. The Apex tops it off with the full driver display, the larger touchscreen, the upgraded audio and the more complete cabin trim.

Safety

ANCAP has not yet rated the seventh-generation Outback. The previous-generation car held 5 stars under the 2021 protocol, but a new shell, new restraint geometry and new ADAS hardware mean nothing carries over until the new car is physically tested. We will update this article if and when ANCAP publishes a result. In the US, the same body has just been named an IIHS Top Safety Pick+, which is a separate test program with different criteria.

Every grade ships with Subaru's updated EyeSight driver assist suite. The forward camera setup gets a wider field of view that should pick up cyclists and crossing pedestrians earlier than the old single-camera unit, and the package adds automatic emergency steering on top of the existing pre-collision braking. A cabin-facing camera handles driver attention monitoring as standard, including a drowsiness alert. Adaptive cruise, lane centring, blind spot, rear cross-traffic and a reversing camera are all standard across the range. You can read more about how those features are tested in our ANCAP ratings explained piece.

How It Stacks Up

On price, the entry Subaru Outback AWD lands within a few hundred dollars of a Toyota RAV4 GXL Hybrid AWD, but you get a noticeably bigger footprint, a flat load floor and a proper raised wagon body instead of a tall hatch. The Wilderness at $59,690 is in the same neighbourhood as a top-spec Kia Sorento Sport+ or the bones of a base GR Sport Toyota RAV4 PHEV, but neither of those comes with adaptive off-road dampers or 240mm of clearance.

The closer fight is between the Wilderness and a Forester Hybrid Touring. Same brand, very different missions. The Forester gets the new Strong Hybrid for under 6L/100km, suits city commuting and short freeway runs, and tops out around $56,000 before on-roads. The Outback Wilderness is hungrier on fuel (Subaru's combined-cycle claim for the turbo is in the high 8s), longer in the body, sits taller and has the suspension to go further off-tarmac. If your weekends are mostly one-day trips on sealed roads, the Forester is the smarter buy. If you head bush, the Outback finally has the hardware to do that without a lift kit and aftermarket dampers.

Warranty and Servicing

Subaru backs the Outback with a 5-year, unlimited kilometre warranty and 12 months of complimentary roadside assist. Capped-price servicing covers the first three years or 45,000km, whichever lands first. Service intervals stay at 12 months or 15,000km. Subaru Australia's 5-year warranty is the segment baseline now, sitting behind Kia (7yr) and MG (10yr), but ahead of Toyota's 5-year warranty with hybrid system coverage extending to 10 years when you service on schedule.

The CarSorted Angle

On CarSorted, the cheapest factory-AWD mid-large SUV with at least 200mm of ground clearance and 2,000kg of braked towing in our database currently sits around $46,000 before on-roads. Push that to 240mm and a turbo petrol, and the field thins out quickly. The Outback Wilderness at $59,690 is one of only a handful of cars in our directory that combines a real wagon body, 240mm of clearance, factory adaptive off-road dampers and a 2,100kg tow rating in a single vehicle. The closest cross-shop is a top-trim ladder-frame ute kitted with a canopy, which lands you in $70,000 to $80,000 driveaway territory once the canopy and a sleeping platform are included. Compare the variants side by side in our comparison tool, or check the full Subaru Outback listing in our directory for trim-by-trim equipment.

What This Means for Buyers

Three groups should look hard at this car. The first is the existing Outback XT owner who was about to give up on Subaru because the turbo had vanished. The Wilderness brings it back, with better hardware than the old XT, for roughly the same money in real terms once you factor in three years of price rises across the segment.

The second is the buyer who was about to spend $75,000 driveaway on a dual-cab ute and a canopy because they wanted ground clearance plus a flat sleeping surface. The Outback Wilderness gets you to roughly $66,000 to $68,000 driveaway depending on state stamp duty, with much better road manners and the same off-road capability for the trips most people actually do.

The third is the buyer cross-shopping a Toyota RAV4 GR Sport PHEV at $66,340 before on-roads. The Toyota wins on fuel and on a quiet daily commute, the Subaru wins on tow capacity and the kind of trip where the road runs out 60km from the campsite. We have a deeper read on that decision in our EV vs hybrid cost analysis and across the best wagons in Australia guide.

If towing 2.3-tonne caravans is the job, get the 2.5L Touring at $56,990 and keep the extra 300kg of capacity. If the job is gravel roads, rooftop tents and the occasional rutted track, the Wilderness is the easy pick. If you want the same hardware plus the bigger screen and the better audio, jump to the Apex.

Best Wagons in Australia | Best Cars for Camping | Subaru Outback in our directory