I can’t say anything about the Outback, but I could go on all day about the Forester or the Legacy. When we moved back to snow country, we had a front wheel drive station wagon, forget trying to get up any hills in that, my DW had to walk home at lest twice during snow storms. So I bought her a Subaru Forester, she didn’t have to walk after that. We live in a very mountainous area and have 20 to 30 miles of very curvy roads through two different canyons (depending on which town you want to drive to). Her car drives so well on these roads wet, snowy, icy, and even dry that we bought me the Legacy sedan within 9 month of getting hers.
Her Forester is a five-speed manual trans mission and she gets 26MPH whether she’s just running around taking the kids to school or out on the highway. My Legacy is a 4-speed automatic and I get 22MPH running around local and 24 to 25MPH on the highway.
This last summer we moved higher into the snowline from where we were living, and now have ¾ of a mile of very rough dirt road (more like mud road or even stream bed right now), both cars do very well getting in and out. Last spring when we were looking at the house, DW was not sure because of the road. Well it snowed while we were still in negotiation, so I drove her out to the house in her car. 8 to 10 inches of snow and after we got on our road we went about 500 feet in someone’s tracts then it was all fresh trail breaking the rest of the way to the house. The Forester went right through it no problems.
Last week we had a snowstorm, 3 to 4 inches on the roads, I drove her car to work, drove right around 4 people in the ditches, when DW took our daughter to school in my car there were lots more people in the ditches she said they all just stared at her as she drove by.

:haha:
Just remember four wheel drive or all wheel drive will help you keep moving in bad conditions but it takes an experienced or cautious driver to keep the car on the road and out of trouble and even then accidents can happen.