I’m looking at some new cars, and the current front runners are a Honda CRV or a Subaru Forrester or Outback.
But one thing I found odd about the Subaru models is when opening the doors, they felt lighter and less substantial than the CRV doors, which seemed much more solid. I’m thinking in terms of car safety and material quality.
I’d normally write off the Subaru models because of that, but they both have glowing reviews on Consumer Reports and solid safety records.
Is the sound/feel of the doors pretty much irrelevant? Or is there a real difference between them?
I think there’s just more glass and less steel in the Subaru doors. Some of the older ones had the doors with no b-pillar like old “hardtop” cars (so when you open the door, there’s no top part, just glass), and Subaru’s general styling trend remains more window-heavy than some other makes. It’s just a styling thing, not a build quality one, so probably nothing to worry about.
You would be safer crashing a Formula One car at 200km/hr than almost anything else. Yet the whole chassis of an F1 car would not weight much more than a single standard car door. It’s about what it’s made of and how it’s made, not how much it weighs.