Gadgetory

at a town with automakers have been giving coupe styling to their SUVs and sedans and well even Kunis the 2016 Subaru Forester looks refreshing wakeboard during the last recession sumer who did embarassingly well when other automakers were flailing I think it's because people were in a practical mindset and Subarus are eminently practical most Subarus get good fuel economy they come standard with all-wheel-drive and they have roomy cabins with a lot of cargo area the Forester in particular has a straight roofline which makes for a really open and airy cabin now Subaru oddly classifies this as a compact SUV I think it fits a little bit bigger than that that slots between the outback and the XV crosstrek in the range I'm driving the Forester 2.5 eye Limited which means it has a 2.5 litre four-cylinder engine under the hood that's good for 170 horsepower 174 pound-feet of torque it's a modest amount of power but it gets most jobs done that's made it to a continuously variable transmission I find this engine and transmission combination mostly livable although under acceleration here's some rough engine noise now super-secret sauce is their all-wheel-drive system the Forester comes standard with it and it's been a big selling point for the last decade in this limited trim Forester I have what Subaru calls ex mode if I push this button down here by the shifter that engages a special traction control program designed to go slow over slippery or off-road surfaces I wouldn't take the Forester Boulder crawling but I did have it coming down a pretty steep rutted rocky road and it did alright from the dashboard here I have the Subaru StarLink system that's right it's called StarLink that's a 7-inch touchscreen here that does navigation phone stereo and some limited app integration this navigation system looks pretty good and on a long drive it was actually giving me route alternatives when there was bad traffic ahead so I like that I've got some limited app integration here too I've got my iPhone plugged into the cars USB port it's running the StarLink app so that gives me some information functions there like news plus I have aha and Pandora it's nice if you used those services and one more high-tech feature here that I really like the Subarus eyesight system up stays two cameras mounted above the windshield and these do a stereoscopic image of traffic ahead this gives me adaptive cruise control lane departure warning and collision warning adaptive cruise control system here I really like how it works really cool thing is that even if a traffic is completely stopped it'll bring the Forester to a complete stop as well the base bottle Forester goes for twenty three thousand two hundred forty five dollars delivers that's what the 2.5 liter engine all wheel drive and a manual transmission bump it up to twenty nine thousand six hundred forty five dollars for the limited edition then add two thousand one hundred forty five dollars to boot up CNET style with the navigation and eyesight package that comes out to a total of thirty one thousand seven hundred and ninety dollars I'm not all that crazy about the foresters looks but it is a really practical road trip car an eye sight system takes the stress off of long distance driving it gets good fuel economy and that all wheel drive system can take you to places than other cars might not