Predictable, dependable and practical as ever
Tried and true Subie will please the faithful
MONTEBELLO, Que. • How loyal are Subaru owners? So loyal, says Subaru Canada’s vice-president of product planning, Ted Lalka, that their utter faithfulness causes a shortage of low-mileage good used cars for his dealers to sell. “A used Subaru for sale with less than 100,000 kilometres is almost impossible to find,” says Lalka, who is also Subaru Canada’s senior marketer.
And why are Subaru-ites so loyal? It all has to do with the company’s core values says Lalka; durability, safety, versatility and performance. Of the first, there is little doubt; R.L. Polk says 96.2% of the Subes sold in the last 10 years are still on the road. Of the second, Lalka says that Subaru is the only company that has had the Insurance Institute for Highways Safety’s Top Safety Pick ranking for every one of its models for the last six years. As for versatility, suffice it to say that Subarus are the preferred choice for skiers, snowboarders and triathletes.
So, that leaves performance as a possible question mark as to why Subaru doesn’t completely dominate the sales charts. Oh, the company sold 42,035 units last year in Canada, but it is still a niche in the sales department. To determine exactly why Subaru has grown so rapidly but has still not captured the mainstream awareness of its Toyota and Honda competitors, I took a Forester and subjected it to a week of abuse that included — but was not exclusive too — off-roading through snowy trails, loaded to the gunwales with gear and luggage, a whole bunch of extremely icy back-country roads and, just for a change, some ordinary, everyday commuting …
And I found that a 2015 Subaru, thoroughly modern though it may be, is still the left-brain oriented, sometimes quirky, perennially practical transportation it has always been.
Let’s start with what hasn’t changed. A 2015 Forester’s engine may be more powerful than ever and so clean you could probably suck in the air directly out of its tailpipe, but Subaru has stuck resolutely to its horizontally opposed Boxer four. The base engine is a 170-horsepower, naturally aspirated 2.5-litre affair that also boasts 174 pound-feet of torque. Typical of Subarus through the years (save perhaps the WRX) neither number is class-leading and, to be perfectly honest, the 2.5i’s performance is stellar but not sporty. Subarus get you to your destination on time; they do not win races (save the WRX). If you absolutely do need more horsepower, there’s a 250-hp turbocharged XT version.
Both engines are tied to Subaru’s Lineatronic Continuously Variable Transmission. Herein lies one of the quirks of the Subaru. While most manufacturers have eschewed CVTs (Nissan being the most significant exception) in favour of multi-speed automatics, Subaru has embraced their efficiency if, for no other reason, to try to regain some of the fuel economy lost to their always-on Symmetrical AllWheel-Drive.
With said superior fuel economy, however, comes the typical CVT bugaboo; on long acceleration runs, the engine can drone on a little as the tranny keeps the engine revving at a steady rpm. The 2.5i, because it has to rev to produce power, can occasionally sound like a stationary generator run amok. That said, even the CVT can’t make the Forester quite as frugal as some of its competition, my 10.6 litres per 100 km average over 1,500 kilometres of mostly highway driving certainly no better than average.
Opting for the CVT does offer one further advantage, however. Unlike manual Foresters, automatic versions get the computer-controlled version of Subaru’s Symmetrical All-Wheel-Drive that offers an X mode. Essentially, X mode tries to emulate the locking centre differential of full-time 4WD systems by upping the pressure on the Forester’s centre clutch pack. In our little off-road excursion, the Forester, “locked” in X mode, made easy work of even the slipperiest hills. However, it is important to remember that Subaru AWD systems are designed for understeering pragmatism, not oversteering sportiness. There’ ll be no tail-wagging hooliganism in a Forester, turbocharged or no.
The other area where Subarus have traditionally trailed the competition has been in interior quality and ergonomics. The last generation WRX, for instance, was a Spartan experience. So what is appreciated, then, is the soft-touch material used on the Forester’s dashboard and door handles. Ditto for a dash that, if not quite state of the art, is at least modern. That said, the Subaru interior still lags behind in some respects. The LCD display for engine information, for instance, isn’t icon based and reads out a bunch of numbers displayed in the size of pixels I thought we left behind with Pong. Additionally, linking your Bluetooth phone isn’t as easy as on some competitive makes. Overall, Subaru has come some distance in narrowing the gap in interior design and ergonomics, it’s still a (small) step behind some of its more mainstream competitors.
Which I suspect won’t matter a whit to intended buyers. The Forester, typical of the modern Subaru, is every bit as practical as XTs and Outbacks of old, is roomier than ever before and has a sophistication previous Foresters could not even dream about. If not quite the belle of the ball, a modern Subaru at least is no longer the geeky dweeb hiding in the corner.