Subaru Adds Standard Navigation to the 2017 BRZ… Sort of

BRZ’s New Magellan app (Credit: © Subaru)

The Subaru BRZ is starting to get a bit long in the tooth, and we’ve witness a harsh drop in sales over the past year, or so. Until it can revamp its resident sports car, Subaru is doing all it can to keep buyers interested in it. And this includes tossing new standard features at it.

Recently Subaru announced that it would make navigation a standard feature on the 2017 BRZ. Well, kind of.

Subaru will add the Magellan navigation app to the BRZ’s standard 6.2-inch STARLINK infotainment standard. While this sounds great on the surface, there is one big issue: it’s not free.

To access the Magellan app, owners have to shell out $29.99 for a three-year subscription or $14.99 per year. Now that’s not a ton of dough considering how much standalone GPS units run, but it seems odd to pay for app-based navigation when there are so many freebies out there.

Toyota does a similar thing with its Entune infotainment system and Scout navigation, but there’s a huge difference: Scout is free. Now, I do have to add that I have never worked with the Magellan app, so I cannot say if it is any better than Scout, but on the surface, to make customers pay for an app-based GPS service seems a little cheap.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve ever used the Magellan and Scout apps, and if you think the former is worth paying for the subscription.