The Subaru Ascent has all of the cupholders!

The Subaru Ascent is a newly revealed 3 row SUV for 2019. The vehicle comes standard with symmetrical all-wheel drive, plenty of towing capacity for a great time in the outdoors and a whopping 19 cupholders.

Subaru, in a renewed bid to appease the long haul family, made the new Ascent with tons of adventurous family-friendly features. Features like 5000 lbs of towing capacity, integrated roof rails, and tons of safety built in. All these things are great, but I’m here to talk about cupholders.

The thing has 19. Wait, what? Yes, 19 cupholders! This is the biggest Subaru ever built so why not also have the most liquid capacity also. With available seating for 8, that comes down to more than two cupholders per person. This car is very obviously made for the American market. This is a huge departure from the shot glass sized cupholders found in my buddies first cars from the 80s-90s.

Where will it end!?!

It seems Subaru isn’t the only one adding the liquid hardware capacity that could quench the

More from Art of Gears

thirst of a camel in the Sahara Desert. Gone are the days where you had to buy an aftermarket cup holder that stuck into the door panel just to get a hands free drink holding experience. You will now find places to put drinks all throughout the interior of new vehicles.

We will have to wait and see what happens now that sugary drinks are starting to fall under more scrutiny.

The cup holders of yesteryear were a mere afterthought.

I spent some time selling at a Mercedes and BMW dealer in the early 2010’s and got constantly asked why the cup holders were so small on some of the older vehicles. I did some research and learned cup holders were kind of a new deal.

In my case, in general, the German manufacturers lean towards more of a drivers car. As a senior salesperson told me “the driver should be focused only on driving, not eating or drinking”. This is a fair thought, but more likely, it was just still catching on with drinks getting larger and much more prominent. It wasn’t until the mid to late 2000’s that cup holders were a given in the German cars and they still left something to be desired. It took a long time for things we take as givens in our cars, like radios and seatbelts.

Next: Car design: why cant things be simple anymore?

Until the next reveals take place, the Subaru Ascent is the clear winner in the cup holder battle that I didn’t know existed.

Home/Cars