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Subaru lifts leg at Super Bowl, goes with Puppy Bowl ads instead

There will be many automakers spending millions upon millions of dollars advertising in the Super Bowl next weekend, but Subaru will not be one of them. Instead, the automaker will be catering toward animal - specifically dog - lovers with a set of commercials for the 2014 Subaru Forester that will appear during Puppy Bowl IX on Animal Planet.
The ads all build on Subaru's reputation of being a dog-friendly brand, and its latest "Dog Tested. Dog Approved" campaign will feature four 20-second spots. Of the four, "Tailgate" and "On The Lot" are definitely the most entertaining, while "Let's Talk Financing" and, especially, "Lint Roller" are snoozers.
Scroll down to watch all four spots, and there's also a press release listing other initiatives Subaru is planning to attract dog lovers. If you like dog commercials, you should check out the newest spot from Volkswagen, too.

Subaru weighing Outback vs Forester approach for seven-seater

Subaru is gearing up for a return to the seven-seat crossover segment, and it's focusing the new model on the US market, but just which approach it will take has yet to be decided. One possibility, according to Automotive News, would be to position it as a larger counterpart to the Outback wagon, with rugged off-road styling. The other would be to sell it as a big brother to the Forester, with cleaner styling. One thing Subaru most definitely does not want to repeat is the Tribeca fiasco, so we wouldn't expect the new model to carry that same nameplate. Introduced in 2006, the Tribeca's divisive front-end styling kept it from being a serious player, and it underwent a facelift only two years later. It was withdrawn from the market altogether after 2014. The company had targeted moving 36,000 units of the Tribeca each year, but sold fewer than 2,800 in America in 2011, barely over 2,000 in 2012, less than 1,600 in 2013 and just a few hundred in 2014. The new seven-seat crossover will go after the likes of the Toyota Highlander, Nissan Pathfinder and new Honda Pilot among three-row Japanese crossovers. Like those rivals, it will be built in the US for the US market – namely at Subaru's assembly plant in Indiana, the same state where the Highlander is produced. The new crossover's arrival will, according to reports, mean that the Levorg wagon offered in Japan and Europe won't be offered Stateside. Related Video:

Porsche 911 Turbo and Nissan GT-R Nismo star in World's Greatest Drag Race 4

We love Motor Trend's annual World's Greatest Drag Race video. Now back for its fourth appearance, the idea of lining some of the world's fastest cars up for a ten-wide, straight-line, full-throttle run is, well... it's pretty freaking badass.
The lineup this year boasts some impressively fast cars to be sure. The group of ten includes the following darlings: Alfa Romeo 4C, BMW i8, BMW M4, Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, Ford Fiesta ST, Jaguar F-Type R Coupe, Nissan GT-R Nismo, Porsche 911 Turbo S, Subaru WRX STI and, last but not least, the Volkswagen GTI. Give us any one of those for the weekend, and we're happy to take the keys.
It must be said though, that for a publication that draws as much water as Motor Trend does, there are some big cars that we might expect to be here instead. The Lamborghini Huracán or Ferrari 458 Speciale would have added some exotic flare to the list, and the omissions of the Chevy Corvette Stingray (for the second year in a row) and the Dodge Challenger Hellcat are real head-scratchers.