Accounting for a quarter of sales, the Forester is an important vehicle for Subaru Canada. In the intensely competitive small SUV segment, the goal is pretty much like a tight baseball game: protect your lead but start stealing bases.
I once called a Subaru the guy your mom wanted you to marry. I meant it. And after a recent romp through the glorious potato fields of Charlottetown, P.E.I., I mean it even more. A flat tire on a muddy road will test a vehicle the way dragging a date to a dry wedding will test a relationship.
Subarus have always been more about what you can’t see than what you can, and the 2016 Forester is no exception. Redesigned last year, nobody opted to muck with what was working. The interior is competent but underwhelming, and you won’t get lost in myriad screen selections that on other brands resemble nothing so much as disappearing down a rabbit hole when all you want to do is lower the temperature. The Forester gives me knobs; the Forester lets me see where I’m going on the models equipped with a navigation system and what I’m backing up into with the camera (until it gets covered in mud; see those potato fields). I want high-tech functionality that doesn’t send me scrambling for the owner’s manual to hook up a phone. A car’s information and entertainment systems should be like an excellent waiter: intuitive, seamless and unobtrusive. The Forester’s updated Starlink systems – 6.2-inch high-resolution screen or 7-inch high-res with GPS, depending on model – would make a fine waiter.
The Subaru Forester looked right at home in the Maritimes.
Lorraine Sommerfeld, Driving
Most who drive crossovers and SUVs don’t challenge them much, but if you’re going to market as a weekend warrior, you should be able to deliver. Subaru’s clearance of 220 mm let us fly through muddy potholes that would have bogged many of its major competitors, including the Toyota RAV4 (160 mm) and the Honda CRV (170 mm). The tricky thing with the places that are most likely to test utility vehicles is that they change; cottage roads that are benign one day can be washed out the next, or a particularly hard winter can leave challenges that once weren’t. Subaru converts demand that historical Symmetrical All Wheel Drive; punch the X Mode button (standard on all CVT Foresters) for superb control, especially on slippery rocks and uneven surfaces. Hill descent will always feel a little freaky to me on any vehicle, but there’s no debating the rather brilliant concept of this car being better able than the driver to gauge what it is tackling.
Rear seats have ample leg room and support to keep your sprogs happy, and a nice surprise was cargo space. With the rear seats folded, it has a class leading 2,115 litres, demonstrated by stacking in packing boxes. You know when you get a good idea of how much cargo your vehicle can hold? When you have to haul it all out to get at the spare tire.
With the rear seats folded, the Subaru Forester has a class-leading 2,115 litres, demonstrated by stacking in packing boxes.
Lorraine Sommerfeld, Driving
A couple of days spent rummaging around New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island subjected our Forester to the Maritimes’ famously unpredictable weather, as well as a couple of journos who thought it would be festive to wear Anne of Green Gables straw hats and red braids. I passed on the famous carrot top impersonation, but was eager to get the Forester’s wheels into the famous red earth. I was worried we wouldn’t be pushing it much until I understood that something labelled a highway could frequently be little more than a patchy asphalt two-laner, all bridges one way only, please. This meant roads were gravel, and some lanes were veritable mud stretches peppered with potholes and strewn with rocks.
Lots of rocks.
Subaru rightfully trumpets their hard-fought and long-held crown when it comes to safety. The Forester is the longest running Top Safety Pick in its class for nine years running, since 2007. With class-competitive prices ($25,995 to $37,995) and fuel economy, it’s not going to be headboard-busting sexy designs or Hollywood infotainment systems that will retain those loyal Subie customers while stealing new ones away from their top competitors, Honda and Toyota; it’s going to be AWD and that safety record.
Not even a flat tire could slow the Forester.
Lorraine Sommerfeld, Driving
But it was a random act of rock that convinced me. Taking a side “road” with admittedly a little too much enthusiasm, I met up with a veritable minefield of sharp rocks. For hours we’d been able to choose lines through obstacles, but this one got away from me. It only took a split second to carve out a gash in the sidewall, but the two of us were on our own. I can change a tire; I struggle loosening tight lug nuts, and I readily admit it. My co-driver supplied most of the power but we got that tire changed in six minutes.
Because Subaru gives you the proper tools to change a tire.
I’ve driven $100,000+ SUVs that provide little more than a couple of toothpicks and a paperclip, and call it a jack (sorry, Land Rover, but really?). I don’t dread changing a tire; I dread changing a tire with cheap tools that a manufacturer hopes a buyer will never see. The flat was my fault, the quick fix prize goes to my co-driver, but Subaru gets all the points for not just telling you to take their vehicle into the boonies, but realizing you have to get it out again.
Subaru boasts a 75 per cent conquest number; that’s the number of buyers who are new to the brand. It’s surely a combination of a long-game goal of establishing loyalty among existing customers, surpassing their own safety records year after year, and building incrementally on what works. And maybe more people are just listening to their moms.
The Subaru Forester was made for getting into a mess in the red earth.
Lorraine Sommerfeld, Driving
