Latest news with #Subarus
Herald Sun
2 days ago
- Herald Sun
Northland shopping centre Land Cruiser stolen from Ivanhoe East home
Don't miss out on the headlines from Police & Courts. Followed categories will be added to My News. The owner of the stolen 4WD that ploughed through Northland joked with his family the vehicle was his as he watched the shocking scenes unfold on a TV news bulletin. Shoppers were forced to run for their lives as the Toyota Land Cruiser sped through the Preston shopping centre about 4pm Wednesday, leaving a trail of destruction. 'I jokingly said to my family while watching it on TV… 'that's my car',' he said. 'I recognised the wheels and the trim. I wasn't sure, but it looked like my car because that model has got certain alloys on it that are different.' The owner, who doesn't want to be identified, said he was stunned when police called minutes later to tell him the vehicle that had sped just metres from terrified shoppers was in fact his. 'No more than half an hour later the police rang and said they'd found it,' he said. Police allege an electronic key reprogramming tool was used to steal the car from outside the man's home on King St in Ivanhoe East on June 2. 'It was taken from the street about 50m from my bedroom and I didn't hear anything,' the man told the Herald Sun on Thursday. 'No alarm went off, nothing. Not only that, I had a steering wheel lock.' The white 2016 Land Cruiser was found dumped on Wednesday afternoon on Beavers Rd in Northcote, about 6km away from Northland. Police arrested a 27-year-old East Melbourne man at a Hoddle Street home about 8.30am on Thursday. He was charged with an array of offences including theft of a motor vehicle, driving whilst disqualified and reckless conduct endangering life. The man said he had noticed a significant rise in car thefts in Ivanhoe East and surrounds. 'We've been living here for 25 years and lately it's just crazy,' he said. 'Just in this street there's been three car thefts. 'They want high-end cars if they can get them.' It comes after new data released by the Crime Statistics Agency on Thursday revealed motor vehicle theft in Victoria was at its highest levels since 2002. 'More than one in five cars are stolen in circumstances where the owner reports retaining their keys,' a Victoria Police statement read. 'This has coincided with an increase in offenders using electronic devices capable of programming or mimicking keys to steal cars. 'Holdens, Toyotas, and Subarus with push start technology are the most targeted cars using this methodology. 'In the last month, these makes have been stolen at two to three times the rate of the previous five years.' Police have urged owners of cars with push start technology, including Land Cruisers manufactured after 2012, to adopt 'preventative measures' to deter thieves, such as an on-board diagnostic port lock, which prevents an offender connecting a reprogramming device to the car. Read related topics: Northland
Canberra Times
08-06-2025
- Automotive
- Canberra Times
2025 Subaru Crosstrek 2.0S review
Lots of Subarus are sold in country areas and regional zones, and for those buyers who are planning to use their car for a longer drive to get the kids to school or get themselves to work, the Crosstrek might be a better fit than for those who live in urban areas and spend a lot of time in traffic.
Boston Globe
22-05-2025
- Boston Globe
Former Harvard morgue manager pleads guilty to selling stolen body parts across state lines
Cedric and Denise Lodge were indicted in New Hampshire in 2023 for selling body parts across the country for at least five years before they were both arrested, records show. The couple used Cedric Lodge's position at the Harvard morgue to divert organs and cadaver parts that had been donated to the Anatomical Gift Program and were supposed to be cremated and instead selling them to people in other states, according to court records and Prosecutors alleged that Cedric Lodge removed organs, brains, skin, hands, faces, dissected heads, and other parts from the cadavers after they were used as for teaching and research purposes. He and Denise Lodge then sold the remains and shipped or personally delivered them to buyers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, prosecutors said. Advertisement In 2023, the couple had two Subarus with vanity plates. One read 'DKSHDWS,' in homage to the gothic-horror show from the 1960s, and t In addition to the Lodges, several others have also pleaded guilty in cases related to the Harvard morgue scandal. Advertisement A Pennsylvania man, Joshua Taylor, pleaded guilty last week to a charge of interstate transport of stolen remains. Prosecutors said Taylor made 39 online payments to an account controlled by Denise Lodge. The payments, which totaled $37,000, sometimes had memos like 'head number 7″ and $200 for 'braiiiiiins,' according to court records. Denise Lodge and Taylor are still awaiting sentencing, prosecutors said in a statement Thursday. Many of the remains were resold at a profit, prosecutors said, including to Jeremy Pauley, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and transporting human remains across state lines. Candace Chapman-Scott, a former mortuary worker in Arkansas who was accused of selling body parts to Pauley, also pleaded guilty in Arkansas federal court and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, prosecutors said. A sentencing hearing for Lodge had not been scheduled in court records as of Thursday. Lodge's lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment. Nick Stoico can be reached at
Spectator
30-04-2025
- Automotive
- Spectator
Is Subaru turning me into a lesbian?
I was recently lent the latest Subaru Forester to test drive, and I enjoyed its sturdiness, its space and the frugality of its 2.0 hybrid engine. But as my mileage progressed over the course of a week's bombing around the back roads of north Norfolk, I started to have a hankering for a nose ring, a tattoo of interlocking female glyphs, and to dye my hair pink and blue and wear dungarees. I put on a k.d. lang playlist, drove home, and watched Angelina Jolie in Gia. Was the Subaru turning me – a bloke, with no unusual pronouns – into a lesbian? Let me explain. In the 1990s, Subaru launched a calculated and groundbreaking advertising campaign on the US market. Rather than try to compete with their bigger rivals (Ford, Toyota etc) over the same white-bread suburban demographic, the Japanese company went after niche groups. Subaru built respectable but drab cars, yet they had a USP: their cars were all-wheel-drive, and the five groups that were identified as willing to pay a premium for AWD were teachers, healthcare professionals, IT professionals, outdoorsy types – and lesbians. Lesbians – ideally outdoorsy lesbians, who perhaps worked in computers, medicine or education – found Subarus' lack of flashiness appealing, and they liked that they could get a lot of stuff in the boot without it being as large as a pick-up. Lesbians were found to be four times more likely than the average consumer to buy a Subaru. So Subaru set to it, devising an ad campaign around lesbians' active and low-key lifestyles. They cultivated Subaru's image in such a way that it helped push gay and lesbian advertising from the fringes into the mainstream. Back in the mid-1990s, Don't Ask, Don't Tell was in full effect in the US military, the Defense of Marriage Act had just passed, and pop culture had yet to embrace the LGBTQ cause – so it was brave. And it worked. The image of Subarus in the USA is in marked contrast to here in the UK, where they're more likely to be driven by older wax-jacketed Tory-voting rural types or, in the suburbs, young men in tracksuits who like to leave tyre ribbons in supermarket car parks. The reason for this demographical schizophrenia is twofold: in the 1980s, when the brand first became established here, Subarus were sold through agricultural machine dealers, alongside fertiliser spreaders and seed drills. Then, in the 1990s, Colin McRae came along and drove a bright blue Subaru Impreza with gold wheels to glory in the World Rally Championship. Suddenly everyone in a baseball cap wanted to go sideways in a 'Scooby'. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the clientele was left-wing– and that's because Subaru of America hired an advertising agency called Mulryan/Nash that specialised in the LGBTQ community. One ad showed two Subarus, one with the registration plate CAMP OUT and the other XENA LVR, a reference to the TV show Xena: Warrior Princess, in which the female protagonists seemed to be lovers. There was another ad where the plate read P-TOWN, a reference to the popular gay vacation spot Provincetown, MA. There were taglines with double meanings plastered over billboards and magazine spreads: the image of an SUV or estate 4×4 tumbling over rocks with the words 'Get out. And stay out', or 'It's not a choice. It's the way we're built', or 'Entirely comfortable with its orientation'. Another read: 'It loves camping, dogs and long-term commitment. Too bad it's only a car'. Was the Subaru turning me – a bloke, with no unusual pronouns – into a lesbian?' Those that got it enjoyed decoding it. It was wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Those that didn't just saw a car with a bike rack and a kayak on the roof. Although 'Likes to be driven hard and put away wet', which took some prime real estate in a 2003 issue of Vanity Fair, was perhaps a less subtle effort. While a lot of straight people were blind to the subtexts of the adverts, Subaru did receive letters from a grassroots group that accused the car manufacturer of promoting homosexuality. Everyone who wrote said they'd never buy a Subaru again. But the marketing team quickly found out that none of those threatening a boycott had ever bought a Subaru before. Some of them even misspelt Subaru. Subaru wasn't the first company to create advertisements for gay and lesbian audiences, but it was the first in the United States to do so transparently and consistently. It's a campaign that has been studied in universities, and discussed in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Atlantic. Today, high concentrations of Subarus are to be found in the liberal meccas of San Francisco, Portland, Burlington in Vermont and Northampton, Massachusetts, and Subaru has donated millions of pounds to HIV/AIDS research and LGBTQ causes. All of which makes me feel very comfortable behind the wheel of my borrowed 2025 Forester. Now where can I buy some Birkenstocks…
Forbes
20-04-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
Subaru's Greatest Ever Road Car Is The STI S210
The S210 is the brand's best handling car yet. The STI S210 could well be the last pure turbocharged, boxer-engined, gasoline powered sports sedan made by Subaru before the model is hybridized. The S210 is based on the WRX S4 sedan but employs upgrades and bespoke parts that elevate this car from ballsy to ballistic. But like all super high achievers, there are conditions—it will be limited to just 500 units, it has no 6-speed manual option, and all are destined for Japanese buyers only. For the present at least. And it also just happens to be one of the most expensive Subarus ever, setting buyers back some ¥8.6 million or around US$60,000. The most expensive was the WRX STI S209 launched in 2019, of which 209 units were sold in the US for $63,995 when new. One sold in October 2023 for $68,500. The S210 gets a massive rear wing. The S210 styling is more subtle than you'd expect with accentuated front bumper brake ducts, blacked out wheel arches, BBS wheels, red STI accents and a massive rear wing which generates downforce above 100 mph. The STI is powered by a 2.4-litre turbocharged boxer engine pumping out 296 hp and 277 lb-ft of torque. This time however, the high priced STI comes with a twist—no 6-speed manual option. Yee gads! That's a brave move from STI. This time the car is only offered with a continuously variable transmission which is a gearbox not that popular outside of Japan, especially on high performance models. According to Subaru, the reasoning for going all in for the CVT is to make the S210 a more refined, more mature, more track capable machine. And speaking of track compatibility, this car takes the base S4 sedan and throws the entire STI parts bin at the S210, a bin filled with race-tuned parts from the company's long competition and storied multiple category victories in Germany's famed Nurburgring 24-hour race. For greater cornering rigidity the S210 gets an STI front flexible draw tower bar and stiffeners, rear stabilizer bushes, bespoke ECU and transmission control unit, 6-piston Brembo brakes with drilled rotors and bespoke pads, an STI performance muffler and exhaust pipe, 19-inch Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres, ZF electronically-controlled dampers and coil springs, and bespoke drive mode select. The cockpit employs Recaro sports seats. Inside it gets leather 8-way Recaro bucket seats that provide great leg and back support in corners, a bespoke S210 designed dash with red accents, seatbelts and STI badging and stitching, aluminum pedals and a red start/stop switch. It's not as luxurious as say an M3, but the materials used and the styling certainly elevates the cockpit to something approaching the BMW. As we mentioned above the S210 is based on the the STI S4 sedan. So you'd expect the new STI model to feel like a tweaked S4. Not so. At a brief S210 prototype test drive at Izu's Cycle Sport Center south of Tokyo recently, it became blatantly obvious that the new model is totally different. In fact it feels borderless now—it does not feel like a Japanese car. It feels a lot closer to a BMW M3 or an AMG C43 in terms of ride quality and cornering ability. But the S210's equivalent $60,000 is a lot cheaper than the M3's $77,000 or the C43's $67,000. Even though the test drive was held in semi-wet conditions, the S210 launched into corners and negotiated them better and with far greater stability than an M3 or C43 could. Indeed, STI claims the car has 296 hp, but when floored, the S210 feels like it has at least 320 hp or more as acceleration is impressive. The car's combination of superior 4-wheel traction thanks to its rally and race-proven AWD system and Michelin grip, improved twist and bend rigidity and massive Brembo brakes that wipe off speed instantly, the S210 tempts you to push harder in each corner. Critics may question the car's throttle response given its CVT-only offering. But thanks to a tuned ECU, tweaked transmission control unit and new sports exhaust system, turbo lag is basically non-existent, and throttle response is quick as the turbo spools up briskly. And the normally sluggish CVT has been tuned to deliver quicker changes that don't leave the driver wanting for more. The only question is how many hardcore Subaru fans are willing to fork over ¥8.6 million or around $60,000. With the current dollar-yen exchange rate that amount may not sound that much, but in real terms, an ¥8.6 million car feels more like an $80,000 to American buyers in terms of value. Who knows if they aren't able to sell them quickly in Japan, then they might offer the remaining stock to right-hard-drive countries like the UK or Australia.
