The Subaru Forester isn't a sport-utility vehicle in the traditional sense. There's more car in the Forester than truck-a good thing because cars handle all but the roughest situations much better than trucks. Add Subaru's well-designed suspension and excellent all-wheel-drive system and there's nothing to fear from snow, mud, dirt, gravel or wet pavement.
The Forester was designed using technology gained by racing rally cars over the most treacherous roads in the world, in Africa, Asia and Europe. Subaru has learned to cope with adverse conditions, winning the highly competitive World Rally Championship three years in a row. And it shows in its production cars.
The Forester inspires confidence in slippery conditions in ways that traditional truck-based sport-utilities can never hope to do. Subaru's all-wheel-drive system constantly redirects power to whichever tires offer the best grip, providing precise control in all types of conditions. Its long, soft springs and stiff shocks allow lots of controlled wheel travel, so bumpy corners don't upset the handling balance. And Forester's generous 7.5-inch ground clearance allows it to tread places a sedan cannot go.
On the road, which is where most of us spend most of our time, the Forester drives like a car. It offers substantially better braking and cornering performance than a truck, making it easier to handle on winding roads or in emergency situations during the stop-and-go of the daily commute. In fact, the Forester holds up well against a sedan. It's fun to drive, a phrase that doesn't apply to trucks in quite the same way. Forester is similar in size to the Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4, but offers superior performance and handling.
Launched as a totally new vehicle in 1998, the Forester is based on the Impreza platform. The Impreza boasts a rigid chassis and provides the foundation for Subaru's rally cars.
All Foresters are powered by Subaru's biggest engine, a 2.5-liter 4-cylinder boxer that produces 165 horsepower. As Subaru points out, torque is the force that gets the car rolling and provides acceleration. Horsepower merely helps the vehicle sustain its speed. Torque has increased for 1999 to 166 pounds-feet at 4,000 rpm. While horsepower figures help sell cars, Subaru says it prefers to engineer its cars to perform well in real-world conditions. In those conditions, the Forester accelerates quicker than the Toyota RAV4 or Honda CR-V.
With horizontally opposed pistons, Subaru's 2.5-liter 4-cylinder is much shorter than a traditional inline-4 engine. That leaves more room for people and cargo. This design allowed Subaru's engineers to mount the engine farther forward in the car and use equal-length driveshafts that are aligned directly with the front wheels, which eliminates torque steer and reduces driveline friction. The boxer engine is also not nearly as tall, which permits a low hood line for excellent visibility out front and a low center of gravity for improved handling balance in corners.
All Subarus sold today are equipped with all-wheel drive. It happens to be one of the best systems in the world, rivaled only by Porsche and Audi all-wheel-drive systems. The beauty of Subaru's system is that it works full time and operates seamlessly, redirecting power to whichever tire offers the best grip.
About the size of a grapefruit, the transfer system takes up little space and adds little weight. Designed for blasting through snow and mud, the system does not have a low-range set of gears, so it isn't suitable for creeping up steep rocky faces. The RAV4 or the Jeep Wrangler are better suited for rock climbing. The Forester, however, is quite capable of carrying a trout fisherman to a remote stream and it's perfect for heading to the ski slopes.
Because it isn't nearly as tall as a sport-utility, it's much easier to load a kayak, a set of skis and other car-top gear onto the roof of the Forester.
For 1999, the Forester has a thicker roof panel, roof stiffeners, front and rear center pillar reinforcements and reinforced side sills and rails-all designed to increase side-impact protection. The seats and seat belts have been modified for improved safety and the airbag system has been revised.
