A very light facelift for a favourite is a solid move.

Price: $44,990
Powertrain and economy: 2.0-litre horizontally opposed petrol engine, 115kW/196Nm, seven-speed Lineartronic CVT with paddles, all-wheel drive. Claimed combined fuel consumption 7.0L/100km, 159 gm/km CO2.
Vital statistics: 4465mm long, 1615mm high, 1800mm wide, wheelbase 2665mm, ground clearance 22mm, 18-inch alloys.
We Like: Nice looks – even when painted yellow, top-class ride and handling, high safety specification.
We don’t like: Interior starting to date, on paper performance is modest.

WHENEVER a brand-new vehicle is launched, it is already almost out of date – because back at headquarters they’re already working on the vehicle’s first facelift.

It has to happen that way, of course. The life cycle of each generation of passenger vehicle usually lasts six to eight years, and during that time such vehicles need to be facelifted at least twice so they can maintain market relevance and public appeal.

What’s fun about all this, are the lengths individual car companies go to turn this normal process into something special.

Many of them describe their facelifted product as ‘new’ when in fact the vehicles in question have undergone a series of only very minor changes such as new lights and grilles, different wheel designs, or new colour options.

Notice they don’t dare describe such vehicles as ‘all-new’, because that term must be saved for totally new-generation versions when they are launched. Such as Volkswagen with its ‘new’ (facelifted) Tiguan and ‘all-new’ (new generation) Golf 8.

Some car companies use the ‘all-new’ moniker for a long time however, such as Mazda is doing right now with the Mazda3, even though that vehicle has been on the Kiwi market since 2019.

Other car companies – and Ford is good at this – call their facelifts Model Year (MY) updates. For example, in December last year Ford NZ announced that a new 2021.25MY Ranger Wildtrak ute would be arriving during the first quarter of this year.

Others again get even more creative. BMW calls its facelifts LCIs, as in Life Cycle Impulses.  But the term does cover everything from minor refreshes to major technical changes. So if BMW wishes to call all such changes by the generic term LCI, who’s to argue with that?

That brings us to the subject of this new vehicle review, the facelifted Subaru XV. And here comes the fun again: in Australia the vehicle is being described as “newly imagined”, while in New Zealand the marketers are pushing the freshened XV as “now in bloom”.

Yep, newly imagined and now in bloom – which underlines how limited this facelift is. It is a minor refresh, with the vehicle receiving a small amount of extra kit, a retuning of the front suspension damping for a smoother ride, new alloys, and introduction of new body colour options.

 It has to be said though that the XV didn’t need much done to it, because it always has been one of the outstanding small SUVs. Essentially an SUV-ised and jacked-up version of the Impreza hatch with a 220mm ground clearance, it is a capable and safe vehicle with a no-nonsense air about it.

So how do you improve on that? Visually, one way is to give a vehicle a new ‘hero’ colour. In the XV’s case that colour is a hue called Plasma Yellow Pearl, which is so named because plasma - the liquid that makes up 55 percent of human blood – is straw-coloured.

The cynic in me suspects that motorists in dairying country such as Waikato, Southland and Taranaki might call the colour something else. But, after driving the XV several hundred kilometres over regional roads in wet conditions, I also noticed that the car’s yellow-ish tint is rather good at hiding dirt.

And anyway, buyers don’t need to choose the Plasma Yellow Pearl – the XV range features plenty of other creatively-named colours including Cool Grey, Pure Red, Horizon Blue Pearl and Ice Silver Metallic.

There are three versions of the XV available in New Zealand. Entry model is simply called XV and it retails for $39,990. Then there’s an e-Boxer hybrid model that carries an RRP of $42,490. And topping out the range is our test vehicle, the $44,990 Premium.

That’s quite an amount of money for what remains a small SUV – particularly since the vehicle is built off the Impreza hatch that can be purchased for $32,490 – but it has to be said the XV carries an impressive amount of kit that always seems able to put paid to any criticisms of the vehicle.

For example, its 2.0-litre horizontally opposed engine is unchanged so continues to offer 115kW of power and 196kW of torque, which means it remains open to criticism for being a bit underpowered - I recall one young motoring journo describing it as asthmatic, which I thought was a bit rich considering this Subie is a small SUV, not a WRX or an STi.

And anyway, the XV answers that criticism by offering the selectable SI-Drive system which is essentially a Sport mode which changes the transmission’s mapping and delays upshifts. Not only that, but the vehicle’s seven-speed Lineartronic automatic transmission can be operated manually using paddles on the steering wheel.

So, asthmatic? Hardly. Granted, the engine does offer modest on-paper outputs compared to some of the other small SUVs currently on the Kiwi market, but it remains a very sound performer. You just have to know how to use a boxer engine.

I don’t think anyone would dare criticise the Subaru XV for its handling prowess, though. Its all-wheel drive is a major help of course, and despite the fact it has greater ground clearance than the Impreza hatch, there’s little body roll during any enthusiastic driving. At the Premium level the XV has 18-inch wheels shod with 225/55 R18 tyres, so that also assists.

This Subaru also has X-Mode which is an off-road traction control system that works the likes of accelerator inputs, AWD torque split and the Hill Descent Control to aid operation off the road. In the Premium model this system now has deep snow and mud settings, which the other XVs don’t.

What else via the facelift? Not much – the XV has a new front bumper and the alloy wheels designs have been changed, and at the Premium level the vehicle now has front and side-view cameras which are very good for when parking, and a side mirror that automatically dips.

As I said, this is a minor facelift, essentially a running improvement to what is already a very competent vehicle. From the looks point of view the model is ageing though, particularly when viewed from the rear.

One impressive feature of this Subaru is its already high level of safety specification. At the Premium level it is loaded – lane-change assist, blind spot detection, rear cross-traffic alert, and an automatic braking system that hits the brakes if it judges there is danger in the vicinity during reversing.

The vehicle also has EyeSight, which uses stereo cameras mounted behind the windscreen that scan the road ahead to, if necessary, operate automatic emergency braking.

So – modest but usable power and torque outputs, great ride and handling, and a high level of safety specification all combine to maintain the XV’s position as one of this motoring writer’s personal favourite small SUVs. And that was the case before the model was newly imagined, as the Aussies have described it.

The latest facelift is a latest episode in an interesting career for the XV. It all started when Subaru decided to SUV-ise the Impreza just as it had earlier done when it created the Outback out of the Legacy wagon.

Initially the model was called the Impreza XV. But then SUVs began to take over the world, and Subaru responded by shortening the vehicle’s title to XV – in doing so consigning the Impreza to its current role as a minor player in what is now a highly SUV-centric Subie fleet.

But that’s OK, because that is simply responding to consumer demands. And isn’t that what facelifts – no matter how minor – are all about?