[Fat Charlie]

The real killer here isn't the AWD, it's the anchormatic- without being able to P&G for real, all you can do in a Subaru is cry. Like your dad I've got a turbo, more horses and more weight. This winter I'm getting ~26 mpg tanks with subzero temps and ~28 mpg tanks when it's largely above freezing. My average over almost two years is 30.5 mpg.

Selling the Subaru and getting a hybrid is one thing, but selling the slush pumper and getting a real tranny is a better answer. You can keep all the fun go, but your left foot is a buch better place to mod your driving than your right- as you've already found from your BSFC chart. If you're not accelerating, then all the gas you're burning at the moment is being wasted, so being able to drop into neutral whenever you're not actually accelerating is where the real savings are.

You can go back to driving your car the way you used to and hypermile at the same time.