Yea. In fact, they really don't have any tread left at all. The rears though have a good 3/8" at LEAST. It really is dangerous - as I found out, lol.

This doesn’t sound like normal understeer by the car’s setup… but more like hydroplaning.
You can get into similar understeer situations, caused by the road’s and/or tires bad condition, even using an oversteery “setup”.

It is already mentioned properly why in normal driving a setup that doesn’t give out the rear sooner than the front, is safer.

Meh, I don't think it was hydroplaning as much as just a loss of grip. I don't think I was going fast enough for that (and the road was at best, a very damp surface - it hadn't rained since the night before.) In fact, it was only still wet there because of the trees. It was dry on the rest of the road

With regards to the old tires discussion... I bought an extra set of wheels to put my race tires on, and they had some old all seasons on when I got them. Plenty of tread left but they were 5 years old....it was baaaaad. Seriously dangerous. About as much traction in the wet as there is in the snow with a new set of all seasons.

With the oversteer vs understeer discussion...when I'm driving enthusiastically, I do enjoy a car that'll oversteer when I want it to. But I do agree that understeer is safer in 99.9% of situations for 99.9% of drivers...

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

I've got a 98 Subaru Outback. It actually gives GREAT feedback on dry roads. You feel a lot more through the steering wheel than my dad's Audi (which feels like it's set in goop.) I know that you can tell when you are approaching the limit of understeer a lot more easily, the thing is that at least with my car, in the wet, there is very little way to tell what is going to happen at all. The big problem is that different wet road surfaces have different levels of grip, and this one was not very grippy at all. The car just LET GO out of nowhere, and even as I slowed, it didn't re-grip at all.

I actually think that the problem was the tires. The car understeered VERY badly, but maybe I shouldn't be mad at the manufacturer. I don't think it was supposed to be that pronounced. The rear tires have a lot more tread than the fronts do. I'm going to have them rotated as soon as possible. Still, while I know that oversteer is VERY dangerous, and that it's not as simple as catching the car and not over correcting, I would rather that the accident by my fault at not being able to save a spinning car, than it being my fault because I couldn't turn sharp enough because Subaru thinks that that is the safe limit for my driving level...

I have a the same car almost the same year. Subaru cars normally do have understeer, even the WRX models.

The Outback/Grand Wagon is a great car but its not a road car, more a hybrid. It rides a lot higher than the other legacy models and has a soft setup for offroad. I have one because we have a lot of dust/gravel tracks around NZ. I also take it down to the gravel river beds.

I always thought it gave a lot of warning near the edge so get your shocks checked. Also remember it reacts slower than a road car because of the soft setup. If you want overtseer just induce it.

The normal tyres it has are all season tyres which sit between standard and snow tyres, they have less grip in the wet but feel quiet good on the dry roads, dust and gravel etc but a little worse than normal on wet surfaces.

If in doubt power out!

apologies if this has been mentioned.

when i was learning to drive, i was told...........always drive to the conditions.

if you understeered in the wet, then id say you were going too fast.

Warning not to use tires with different diameter is actually very true, it is very easy to destroy awd system if you have more thread left on some tires.

Reason for that is that when front and rear tires spins at different speed there has to be slip somewhere and it is weakest link that will slip, causing it to fail and it goes fast, 2000km can be enough.

But I think you know this, just thought to post just in case