2020 Forester owner in Canada
2020 Forester owner in Canada. I had previously owned the first two generations of Legacy back in the 1990s and despite admiring the great AWD system in these cars I simply got tired of the poor quality, especially in the second gen car that seemed to always have something going wrong. When the fuel gauge stopped working in my 3 year old 95 Legacy, just after the bumper-to-bumper warranty expired, that was the last straw. I switched to Toyota and never went back, until now. Not a fan of the current styling of the Toyota products and especially hate the interiors with the ugly infotainment screen that sticks up like an afterthought tacked onto the dash. I decided to test drive a new Forester and loved the interior and smooth, solid feeling on the road. After living with the Forester for a few months there are a few things I would like to see added. (1)Give the driver the ability to permanently shut off the engine auto start-stop feature. This system is random and crude in its operation. When I remember to do so, I turn it off every time I drive. (2)Offer an around-view camera system as an option, or even better, include in in all trim levels. Nissan has had this in their SUVs for several years. It's even available in the lowly Kicks. Having driven vehicles with this type of system I think it is a very useful safety feature. It's something that you appreciate every time you are pulling away from a parking place. This is especially useful for people who have young children who leave bikes, toys, etc anywhere they feel like, and people who live in or visit rural areas where pets are not always on a leash. I would gladly trade lane assist for a 360 camera display. (3)Reduce/simplify the trim levels. Here in Canada there are six different trim levels of Forester. Is this really necessary? Despite all of these trim levels you can't get either of the top two trims without leather seats. Not everyone is a fan of leather. Why should I be forced to accept leather seats in order to get all of the other features that are only available in the top trims such as a heated steering wheel, heated rear seats, and an upgraded stereo. Three trim levels would be plenty - Base, Mid-level, and Luxury. Offer leather as an option - not mandatory. Do away with the Sport and just offer a blacked-out wheels and exterior details appearance package on any trim level and on any body colour. The orange interior and exterior accents of the Sport look silly. Offer colour accent pieces as dealer installed options for people who are into that sort of thing. (4)The exterior styling could be spiced up a bit. Pretty bland on the sides. Add a character line just below the door handles perhaps. The rear side windows on the cargo area look odd - their curved shape doesn't come together well with the angle of the rear hatch. The more squared-off design of these windows on the previous generation looked better. I'm thinking that they went to the curved design just to differentiate the new model, even though it looks worse than before. The high ground clearance is wonderful but it makes the Forester look like it was the victim of a lift kit, with its tiny-looking wheels unable to fill the vertical open space left in the wheel wells. Not sure how to fix that other than offer larger rims as an option. I put after-market black alloys on mine for summer tires and that helped somewhat, but I'll have to put the stock rims back on for the winter tire season from October to April, so it's only a partial remedy.
These things are mostly minor quibbles. Overall I love my new Forester. Hopefully Subaru addresses some of these minor issues in the next redesign, and hopefully the quality and reliability has improved since my previous experience with Subaru's back in the 90s. So far so good.