Is a small SUV in your driveway's future? It is for a lot of families, and today's auto showrooms seem to have more small SUVs than any other class of vehicle. There's a lot of choices out there, and a lot of cars that I wouldn't mind driving on a daily basis.
Among small SUVs, I like the fuel economy numbers on the Ford Escape hybrid, but I don't like its higher price tag, and I'm always leery of being an earlier adopter who gets to discover bugs as the manufacturer works kinks out of new technology. I also like the concept of the higher horsepower numbers that GM posts with its Chevy Equinox and Pontiac Torrent, but neither vehicle feels as solid or handles nearly as well as the proven Honda CRV or Toyota RAV4 --- the two "safe choices" in the small SUV market.
Just don't forget to test drive a Subaru before you make your choice!
I sometimes forget about Subarus, but the fact is that they are an extremely well-engineered vehicle that has a long and highly respected reputation when it comes to nimble agility in true all-wheel drive format. Other SUVs like to boast of their rough and ready lifestyles, but when push comes to shove, Subaru is the vehicle that's more likely to get you safely through mud and snow and nasty weather than the cars with makeovers. If you're the kind of person who judges a book by its cover, you'll probably dismiss Subaru out of hand. That's a mistake, in my opinion. Let's take a look at an entry-level Subaru Forester to see why...
Exterior: Attractive or Nondescript??
Subaru Forester is a basic, small station-wagon looking SUV. It's not ostentatious or flashy. It looks smaller than competing vehicles and it appears to sit lower to the ground.
The vehicle
looks more car-like than most small SUVs --- which invariably prefer truck-like looks. But the looks are deceptive. In every critical area, the Forester is more than adequate, and often surprisingly so. It looks small, but its really not much smaller than competitors. It looks like it sits close to the ground, but in reality, it has the best ground clearance in its class.
The styling is more functionally intelligent than it is sexy or head turning.
Forester is far from being the sexiest looking thing on four wheels, but I appreciate its understated sense of dignity. It has the kind of unassuming looks that let it get lost in the crowd. Look at it, and you think, "Big whoop. I've seen better." And you have...so have I.
Mostly, we've seen better in cars that have less competence where it really counts: under the hood and on the road.
These days, car makers like having everything look beefy and bold, while in reality, their cars and SUVs have the off-road capability of a school bus. Like the Nissan Murano --- if that ugly beast were a girl, it would be stuffing toilet paper in its bra...if it were a boy, it would stuff the toilet paper in its crotch. Either way, it makes a bold statement that only stands up when the sun is shining.
Subaru does the opposite. It says, "Ignore me, I am nothing threatening." Having a Subaru in your garage is like having Clark Kent backing you up. It's all in the driving experience...
Driving Experience: A Nimble and Lithe Athlete...
I don't want to repeat all the techno-marketing jumblespeak of Subaru's advertising mavens. Lord knows, there's enough reviews on this and other sites that already do that, and if you really want a Subaru brochure repeated to you, I invite you to browse around this site....I'm sure you'll find what you want.
I prefer to cut to the chase and talk about what I see as the
important aspects of Subaru's engineering --- the crux of what makes this car
more driveable than its competitors. I
do feel that Subaru Forester is a better driving experience than a Honda CRV or a Toyota RAV4, and the difference is
agility.
Lately, I've heard some BMW ads that ask the question, "Does a performance SUV make sense?" Naturally, they're implying that their own X5 and X3 are the SUVs that DO make sense, but in my opinion, the Subaru Forester is essentially an inexpensive performance SUV, and this is the crux of why I like it better than any small SUV from Toyota, Honda, Chevy, or Ford.
Subaru likes to talk about how every vehicle they build has two fundamental elements: symmetric all-wheel drive and a boxer engine.
In my opinion, Subaru's symmetric all-wheel drive is a good, reliable, well-engineered drive system --- but I'm not convinced its a whole lot better or smarter than what other companies do. That boxer engine though...that's an entirely different matter.
You can go to Subaru's web site, or read reviews in car magazines, to see what Subaru's boxer-style engine is about, because all the techno-speak doesn't really matter once you're driving the car. What does matter is that its net effect is to put the engine's mass down lower toward the chassis. This essentially negates the roll factor and the yaw that you get in virtually every SUV on the road.
SUVs as a class are relatively poor performers. They are not really "drivers cars". Their handling
should suck, and you should drive them conservatively unless you want to end up on your roof, another statistic in the classic SUV rollover dilemma. SUVs are too big and too tall, with too much mass sitting too high. Simple physics tell you that SUVs
should tip over with great regularity --- and they do. Perhaps that's why GM built-in such hideously bad turning performance on Chevy Equinox.
By the numbers, Subaru Forester can do a U-turn with a radius of just a tad over 34 feet. For the small SUV class, that's the magic "best of breed" number --- nobody does significantly better, some do dramatically worse. Numbers only tell a part of the story though. When it comes to performance questions, I think its more important to judge by how things
feel.
I drove the Forester for 3 days, driving it in a mix of urban traffic near Houston, open interstate highways, and rural backroads in the Hill Country area near Austin. Mostly dry road conditions, but with one afternoon of very heavy thunderstorms and high winds. The Subaru always
felt solid, controlled, and competent, even taking turns at higher speeds than I'd dare do with the much bigger Honda Pilot that's king of my own driveway.
I love my Pilot, but the Subaru runs circles around it in handling, agility, and just plain
funness (if that's even a real word). The Subaru's 173 horsepower engine is very responsive, with a willing eagerness to jump up from a standing start to a highway cruising speed. (If you spring for the extra $$$ and get the XT package, Subaru turbocharges the engine to 210 horses). In an era when 200-hp sedans are common, 173 horses doesn't sound that impressive, but again, it's how the car
feels and what it does with the horses its got. The Subaru's smaller footprint, somewhat lighter weight, and lower weight distribution all help it
harness its horses to better effect.
Again, its that boxer engine design, putting all the weight down low and letting you safely drive your car more like you'd drive a BMW and less like you'd drive a....well...like you'd drive a ponderous SUV. And that's the reason why I like Subarus...and why I'd prefer a Forester over a RAV4 or a CR-V.
Interior: Comfy Enough?
Whenever I write a car review, I drive the car first (usually because I'm reviewing rental cars or company fleet cars, and I generally don't know what I'll get until I have the keys in my hand), and only later do I look at the manufacturer web site and car comparison sites (like edmunds.com) to see what the numbers are and what the options and packages are.
So I drove the Forester, kicked the tires, sat in every seat in the car, and loaded as much beer as possible in the back (just kiddin'). The Forester does a few things that aggravate me, but they do many, many things very right.
I appreciate the simple, straightforward layout of the instrument panel. I'm driving the basic X trim package, and I see from pictures on the web that the XT package changes the climate control paradigm. Too bad because I really
like the straightforward, no-nonsense, easy to understand knobs used on the X-style panel.
Likewise, the gauges themselves are very crisp, clear, and unobstructed. It's got a tach, but at least you can actually buy a Forester with a manual transmission. (Performance car fans should note that neither Honda nor Toyota offer a stick --- not even as an extra-cost option! In their defense, small SUVs are
not performance vehicles, despite BMW ads that imply they could be, but in a perfect world,
every car could be ordered with a stick.)
Most of the controls are easily accessed and intuitively implemented. The only exception seems to be the cruise control, which is friggin'
weird! They've got this little pad of controls that's mounted more on the steering column than on the wheel itself, and its set just far enough back to make it unnatural to reach when you're actually cruising down the highway. There's no way you'll switch on the cruise without taking your eyes off the road and pondering the layout for a moment --- it's just
not done that well, and is even more aggravating to me than the layouts that require hitting a switch on the dash before you can use the steering wheel controls. Weird cruise controls...no doubt about it.
The center console is weird too. That extendible arm rest is kind of cool, and I actually find it pretty comfy on long highway stretches --- I just wish it didn't send my grande cup of Starbucks flying when it tried chopping it down to a tall. No, I don't know why Starbucks calls its small cups "tall" when they're not.
The seat itself is very comfortable and provides better support than I expected in a baseline model. Although the X version of the Forester has manual seat controls, I really liked that it included a height control and not just the ability of move the seat back and forth and adjust the recline angle of the back. That up and down action makes a nice difference for the taller driver.
Numbers don't really tell the story on driving comfort for this vehicle. It
is a smaller feeling interior than most small SUVs, and the number comparison
does back up that impression, but it doesn't tell the real story.
The real story is that the Forester is a very comfortable vehicle with more than adequate space for a typical family of 4.
Yes, the head room tends toward the low side of the number range for its class, but I'm 6 feet tall and I had over 2 fingers worth of space between my head and the ceiling --- that tells me that unless you're more than about 6'4", you'll do great with the Forester.
Likewise, the back seat length
is a tad shorter than what you get with RAV4 or CR-V --- but nobody
really crams 3 adults in the back seats of any of those vehicles and for two passengers, the space is very roomy and comfortable.
I always sit in the back seats of the vehicles I drive to see how much space I'm inflicting on my passengers, and with the drivers seat set to the most comfortable position for my 6-foot-tall self, my same self can sit behind me and
still have adequate leg room without banging up against the back of the drivers seat. Of course that still won't be enough space to keep a determined 4-year old from kicking the bejeezus out of it as you threaten him with serious bodily injury, but then, that vehicle hasn't yet been built.
I do have three suggestions for Subaru if they're looking for ways to improve the back-seat experience: 1) provide drink holders on the doors and not that flimsy, cheesy plastic contraption that pops out from the back of the console, 2) put the center seat belt where someone can actually reach it, and not on the ceiling of the rear cargo area, and 3) provide a power outlet in the back seat since travelling kids like using their portable DVD players to keep from angering Dad enough to actually pull over and make them sorry they didn't stop kicking his seat back when he told them the first time.
Safety and Reliability Considerations...
No matter what car you're thinking about buying, I highly recommend getting
good information about its potential safety and reliability. Don't rely on web sites with incomplete or statistically insignificant data.
For safety, I'd look for
consistently gathered, independent information. Start with the federal government's site www.safercars.gov --- that's where you'll find links to crash test results, comparison reports, rollover tests, safety recall notices, etc. The insurance industry also has very good, consistent information about how much it costs them in medical and damage claims for pretty much every vehicle on the market: these provide some insights to the relative safety of vehicles (their web site is www.iihs.org)
For reliability info, I look to JD Powers for short-term quality and satisfaction results and Consumer Reports for long-term indicators of reliability and durability. Some people here have issues with Consumer Reports, but the bottom line is, nobody else really has a statistically significant data base of real reliability data, and therefore, can't make the kind of sound conclusions that Consumer Reports does.
The NHTSA safety ratings on Forester are 5-star for front and side impacts and 4-stars for rollovers. No vehicle in the small SUV class does better (though some do as well). If you look closely at the rollover test results, you'll see that Forester (at 15% tip probability) comes
very close to the numbers posted by some sedans, while most SUVs hover in the 20-25% range (Honda and Toyota both do a bit better with 19% tip probability on the CR-V and 17% on the RAV4). The numbers still don't justify calling the Forester a "performance SUV", but at least they spin in the right direction for a traction-oriented buyer who wants to pay some lip service to the safety issues...
Fuel economy numbers are better on the Forester than for most small SUVs, but still not what I consider "good". Forester rates 22 city / 29 highway. The Escape Hybrid will beat those numberst, but that comparison isn't really fair since the technologies are too different and the tests may not be entirely accurate for comparing hybrids to traditional engines. More fair is to simply state that no 2WD mainstream small SUV can beat it, and most 4WD or AWD models do worse.
Subaru Forester has a base MSRP of $21,795.
Competitiveness: Why I Prefer Forester Over Hondas and Toyotas...
I like the Subaru Forester. Its not flashy, and I like its intelligent engineering approach that does smart things like making the vehicle look more car-like than truck-like and using a low-center-of-gravity approach to weight distribution to keep it feeling nimble, agile, and fun to drive.
As most SUVs seem to be getting bigger, bulkier, and less fun to drive, Subaru Forester is a vehicle that remembers that being athletic doesn't just mean doing steroids and pumping up, it also means being quick and graceful and utterly competent.
The numbers don't always point to a big difference between Forester and its competitors, but the
spirit of driving the thing....
that's where I think you
do find a difference. Drive 'em all and see if you don't agree.
Closely Related Reviews...
Looking at new small SUVs? Here's a couple you might be considering...
* 2006 Pontiac Torrent
* 2006 Toyota RAV4
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