  2014 Subaru Forester 2.5i Limited. Click image to enlarge |
Review and photos by Brendan McAleer
My 10-month-old daughter has eyes of the most deep and piercing blue, same as her mother, and she turns them up at me with a questioning look after I whack her on the head.
“Gah?” she queries – a catch-all babyism ranging in meaning from “Hello!” to, as here, “What the heck, Dad?”
“Sorry kid,” I say, “Mosquitoes.” Then I head over to belabour my wife about her legs where the little buggers are lined up like Corsairs aboard a WWII aircraft carrier.
Ah, camping life in the Canadian wilderness.
Still, what better test for Subaru’s fourth-generation Forester than loading it up with a small apartment’s worth of outdoors gear and then dragooning it into being a tie-down for our tarp? Oh, did I not mention that it’s currently raining? I live in BC – we tend not to notice.
Here deep in the skeeter-infested woods of the Pacific Northwest, my Limited-trim tester looks rather good. An entirely new design for 2014, the Forester comes in various specifications, this being the highest equipment level available with the base 170 hp 2.5L flat-four engine (more about this later).
Base models of this year’s Fozzie start at $25,995 + freight, and with Bluetooth and heated seats standard, it’s already a good buy – and one of only two ways to get yourself a six-speed manual (there’s also a stick on offer in the Touring). Moving up to the Convenience package nets you a power seat, foglights, 17-inch alloys and a back-up camera for a little over $3K, and also opens up the option of the PZEV model. This squeaky-clean machine is basically just a California-spec ride with a fancier catalytic converter that produces fewer emissions than your ordinary Forester, which is already fairly eco-friendly.
  2014 Subaru Forester 2.5i Limited. Click image to enlarge |
The touring package is a thousand more than that for a big moonroof and a power liftgate, and then comes this top-of-the-line Limited with leather interior, HID headlights and a Harmon/Kardon sound system. Subaru’s Eyesight safety-system net and satellite navigation can be added on to a limited, but were not equipped on my test vehicle.
First, the good news. While the turbocharged XT model has ditched the iconic hood scoop for a pair of side-mounted gills that make it look like a groupie with dimples, the blocky, bluff prow of the regular Forester is really quite handsome. From the side and rear things are a bit more anonymous, but a closer inspection shows a typical Subaru attitude to form following function. This year’s Fozzie is up in size around about 10 percent, but it still has plenty of greenhouse space all around.
Hopping up into the interior – seat height is raised over last year’s machine – both driver and passenger are treated to an airy cabin with decent sightlines. Thank goodness: the bane of the small crossover segment is a near-universal designer obsession with curvy sheet metal at the rear, compromising rearward visibility for the sake of a shapelier profile.
The Forester is, as it has been since the beginning, kind of a shoebox. I like shoeboxes. You can fit things in them.
With the rear seats up, there’s plenty of space for adult passengers in the rear, and our colossal rear-facing child seat fits no problem. I do wish the 60/40 split was reversed, with the larger folding section on the driver’s side so that maximizing cargo space with three passengers didn’t require left-side loading and unloading the kid. However, seats up or seats down, the Subaru can haul just about everything.
Nits to pick: the seats don’t fold exactly flat, the material pegged onto the back of the folding sections is going to snap its tabs and be flapping around within a few year’s heavy use, there doesn’t appear to be sufficient cargo area lighting if you’re unloading in the dark, and the rear cargo privacy cover is as flimsy as a three-dollar umbrella. Even so, where cargo-carrying is concerned, the Forester gets top marks.
  2014 Subaru Forester 2.5i Limited. Click image to enlarge |
While this is merely an overnight camping trip, we stuff the Subaru with enough gear for a week as a dry run for a longer voyage planned later in the summer. That means: enormous tent, fresh-water container, folding table, folding chairs, tarps, blankets, one suitcase of kid-stuff, rolled sleeping bag the size of a hay bale, cooking gear, folding table, first aid kit, enough clothing to outfit a polar expedition, camp stove, teapot, an assortment of buckets filled with who-knows-what, extra shoes, extra lamps, and a partridge in a pear tree. Oh yeah, and mosquito repellent.
Loaded up with gear, as well as two adults and a kid, we hit the Sea-to-Sky, en route to Pemberton. Immediately, the heavily laden Forester shows a polarizing issue.
For fuel-economy reasons, Subaru has installed a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) as the automatic option for their small crossover (a six-speed manual is still available in base models). Most automotive reviewers hate the idea of a CVT, and if I’m honest, it’s hardly my favourite. Give me a Mazda CX-5’s six-speed automatic any day.
However, if driven gently, a CVT can actually be quite nice. Stomp the throttle and up comes the engine noise in a somewhat tuneless roar. Glide into the throttle as if, for instance, you have a baby on board, and the Forester smoothly picks up speed, the tach cresting up towards 4,000 rpm and then tailing back down again. Very civilized.
At speed, the wind noise from the large side mirrors is very evident, and there’s a bit of tire roar as well. Mind you, compare current refinement levels to the frameless windows of Subarus of yore and it’s like flying business class compared to having your Sopwith Camel shot down by Snoopy.
The steering is a bit overboosted, and particularly numb when the wheel is dead-centre. However, winding up the highway along Howe Sound, the Forester settles into a pleasant rhythm, rolling a bit more than sportier CUVs, but tackling the curves very nicely.
 2014 Subaru Forester 2.5i Limited. Click image to enlarge |
Popping into Squamish for our lunch, we pick up a swing-top bottle of ale from the must-visit Howe Sound Brewpub and then elect to take a less direct way out of town, perhaps swinging past the Brackendale Eagle viewing area. Two wrong turns later and the paved road disappears, leaving us looking at a lengthy, pockmarked stretch of wet gravel that’s so full of potholes it looks like an enormous brown cheesegrater. Drat. The kid’s just gone to sleep.
Here though, the Subaru impresses. Like, really impresses. I recently drove a CX-5 on rumpled roads like this and with that vibrato memory fresh in my head, the Subie’s gliding performance is all the more surprising. It really shouldn’t be though, this kind of stuff is what Subarus were born to do.
Back on the 99, we sail up through Whistler, where summertime mountain-bikers are thronging the hill, and then beyond. Past Whistler, the Sea-to-Sky changes from its Olympic-grade four-lane expressway to its former snaky self. While neither the steering nor the soft suspension particularly impresses, the decent front-end bite does impart a certain amount of confidence. As you’d expect with a Subaru, it feels very planted.
Even with the road twisting and turning, there’s time to check out the interior further as the kilometres roll past. It’s much improved over the old car, but still not quite what you’d call nice. The fake metal trim is just that, fake, and while the soft-touch material on the dash is decent, there’s plenty of very easily scratched plastic scattered throughout the rest of the cabin. We hit a bump, and despite the pliant suspension, something rattles in the dashboard. Oh Subaru. Don’t ever change.
The onboard entertainment system is halfway between being old-school outdated and refreshingly simple. I like the chunky air-conditioning controls, but the dash-pod mounted rear-view camera is far too small.
  2014 Subaru Forester 2.5i Limited. Click image to enlarge |
Reaching our camping spot at Nairn Falls, I’m somewhat relieved to leap out and stretch my legs, even after such a brief jaunt. The Fozzie’s seats aren’t really all that comfortable, and are a little on the hard side. Some fiddling with the lumbar controls improves things to a degree.
Heading slightly further up the road to Joffrey Lakes for a hike, we slot the Forester between an old two-tone Legacy Outback and a newish Toyota Highlander. Our car is far more like the latter than the former, but really, that’s no bad thing.
 2014 Subaru Forester 2.5i Limited. Click image to enlarge |
Coming back down for the evening requires putting the Subaru through a series of steep, twisting switchbacks. Just as I’m thinking, “I must come back here in a Porsche or something,” the brake pedal goes extremely mushy. I wasn’t really hustling the Fozzie along, but the combination of steep grade, braking to a crawl from speed, and onboard mass seemed to heat up the brakes until they went all porridgey – certainly something to consider when evaluating towing capacity (the Forester is rated for 1,088 kg (2,400 lb) of hauling across the board).
Back in camp, the Forester’s standard factory-mounted roof rails provide a much-needed attachment point for our tarp, turning the Subaru into part of our campsite. As we scurry about, slapping away at the mosquitoes, a brief summary is easy.
If you’re in the market for a small crossover, there are many strong plays for your dollar, and the argument could be made that the new Forester is a bit unrefined and lacks the fun-to-drive character of its rivals. However, it is a Subaru, through and through, great at the rough stuff, easy to drive, capable of hauling all kinds of gear, confident and planted in the wet. It’s also as safe as driving around in a Bank Vault, being the only small SUV on sale that passes the new small-overlap frontal collision test.
Better yet, if you can get past the quirks of a CVT, it now even has the fuel efficiency necessary to keep up with the competition at 7.5 L/100 km city and 5.5 L/100 km highway. You’ll get more like eight litres per most of the time, but it’s a marked improvement over the outgoing model.
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It’s a Merrell hiking shoe rather than a wingtip or high heel or Nike runner. Really though, what else would you wear camping?
Pricing: 2014 Subaru Forester 2.5i Limited
Base Price (2.5i): $25,995
Base Price (Limited): $33,295
Freight: $1,650
A/C Tax: $100
Price as tested: $35,045
Crash Test Results:
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
