The 2019 Subaru Forester is here, and it is large. Subaru calls it the roomiest, most capable and quietest Forester to date, in case the children break the noise-canceling headphones they stick in their iPads immediately after getting in. It’s also up a full 12 horsepower from base last year, but won’t come with a turbo.
Along with the extra room and lack of noise, good for the comfort of all of those passengers you probably didn’t want to drive around anyway, Subaru says the new Forester will get an “updated” version of Subaru’s 2.5-liter, four-cylinder Boxer motor. That’ll be good for 182 horsepower and 176 lb-ft of torque on this year’s model, up 12 HP from last year’s base model, and 17 HP from the original that came out 20 years ago. Almost one horsepower unit per year at that rate!
But perhaps the biggest change on Forester power is that the turbocharged XT trim is out on the redesigned Forester, meaning that the 250-HP version of the SUV is out.
It was fun while it lasted.
The new Forester will have start-stop technology and a continuously variable transmission, and all-wheel drive comes standard. It also comes standard with Subaru’s EyeSight safety feature, which gave us a big scare a couple of weeks ago when a U.K. executive said Subaru could cut manual transmissions to put EyeSight on all of its cars. Subaru’s American division put that to rest, for now.
Subaru claims the new Forester will get 33 MPG on the highway, and will also let a driver pick between “Intelligent” and “Sport” driving modes—Intelligent smooths out acceleration to save fuel, and Sport makes things peppier.
The 2019 Forester also comes with more cargo space, which seems to be what everyone cares about anyway. It’s also huge—like, really huge. This is a big car.
And because it’s a large SUV, it will sell very well. Go ahead and place your bets on that now.