Posted Thursday, March 5, 2026 at 9:58pm
Subaru’s Forester is intended to evoke a far milder employment choice and one hinting at some appealingly rugged usage. The first Forester, emerging in 1997, was promoted with the simple explanation “SUV Tough, Car Easy”.
What you got was a tall, all-wheel-drive estate car, served with unexpected aural character via the rhythmic beat of a flat-four engine. Flat four apart, it was no ground-breaker. Toyota’s 1984 Tercel estate offered much the same mix, if with a conventional motor.
The high-roofed Tercel estate has long gone, however, while the Forester endures, albeit as a machine of slightly different conception from the early editions.
Subaru’s second, 2002 take on the Forester stuck to the same recipe, which proved especially wholesome in the US – but the near-inevitable drift towards a full SUV came in 2008. And today’s Subaru Forester really is conceptually much the same beast as other SUVs on the road.
