2011 Subaru Forester 2.5X Crossover SUV Review & Ratings

The Subaru Forester Crossover made its debut way back in 1997, and even then only for the Japanese market.

Based on Subaru's rally winning Impreza platform, the design concept for the Forester from day one was to provide a happy medium between a sports utility vehicle (SUV) and a traditional, although slightly larger than normal, family station wagon. A vehicle that would provide a smooth and comfortable ride while combining superb handling both on and off road thanks to Subaru's All Wheel Drive (AWD).

With the first series launch of the Forester, consumer reviews rapidly showed that Subaru had hit a winning formula. The original Subaru Forester came with a 2.5-liter, 165-hp flat-4 engine, the most powerful that could be found in a mini-SUV of that era, alongside lush levels of interior comfort, storage that only an oversized station could offer, as well as impressive safety figure according to all relevant reviews. The Subaru Forester soon clamed a very wide section of the market, leaving traditional rivals such as Toyota with their RAV 4 and Honda with the CR-V well in their wake.

Series Two of the Forester, launched in 2002, continued to lead the way, with Subaru only required to make a few minor tweaks to an already winning formula. Tweaks such as upgrading the car's interior and raising the engine torque levels. General reviews for the model continued to be only positive.

If there were any complaints about the first two series' of the Subaru Forester according to objective reviews was that the vehicle's off-road handling capabilities were less impressive than that of their rivals, exacerbated by the vehicle's low ground clearance, which could even be deemed problematic on rough conditions. Subaru may well have been aware of that fact, and went along with their intuition. An intuition that tells them that the typical Forester owner would rarely if ever subject their crossover to these kinds of rigorous tests.

With their series three models, launched in the USA in late 2011, some fairly significant updates have been carried out on the Subaru Forester. Probably the most significant of them all being that the Forester is the first to be powered by Subaru's FB engine. The FB engine, according to trade reviews, is considerably more powerful than its predecessors will be available either in a 2.5 liter double overhead camshaft FB25 version for the Subaru Forester 2.5 Crossover standard version.

The FB 25 is the first engine to be launched by Subaru in more than twenty years, and the company obviously feels that it will be worth the wait for their customers. To begin with fuel economy will be significantly improved, while retaining the same horsepower on the previous models, but at lower rpm and at a considerably higher torque.