I looked forever for a reasonably-sized wagon, hatch or small SUV available with a manual. There aren’t many contenders: Mazda3 (fun but cheap feeling and less attractive after the redesign), new Scion Xb (eeewww), VW Jetta TDI Sportwagon (sorry, I’m not a gambling man).

I was reluctant to give the Subaru a chance because of the raised stance and AWD fuel penalty. Turns out its not so bad at all. With the manual transmission it ties or beats the Rav4 and CR-V on mpg. It handles better than both of those cars, looks and feels way more upscale, and is VERY quiet on the road. The GIANT sunroof sealed the deal. And that heavy duty suspension will soak up Southern California potholes all day long (they’re not getting fixed any time soon.)

I LOVE this car. Spiritual successor to the Volvo 240 wagon. My only complaint is that I couldn’t get the leather interior with a manual transmission.

I own a 06 Civic (really nice car!)and have owned other Hondas and Saabs in the past.

The 09 Forester was superior, IMO to the cars mentioned above. The CRV was a huge disappointment in particular. It felt small, performance was so-so, and try sitting in the back seat with the low seat back and the headrests poking you in the back unless you adjust them every time. A well the rear visibility was not great. Honda missed the boat with this one.

The Forester felt very composed driving it – we took our test drive in a rainstorm and never felt tentative or out of control in the Forester.

My only complaint is that the middle seat in the back is cramped and if you get the version with the flip out tray, fairly uncomfortable.

In any case looks like we’re getting the Subaru.

Subaru should leverage its excellent AWD powertrain and offer a bit more distinction in its interior styling. Nevertheless, this is a superb little utility wagon for those who just need a trouble-free all-season vehicle. Anyone looking for personality in a compact vehicle, get a GTI.

The interior is light and airy—especially with the giant sunroof—and fabulously roomy, with lots of storage cubbies. And the well-controlled ride motions along with its very solid body structure give the Forester the feel of a much larger vehicle, though it’s relatively compact and has a shorter turning radius than last year. And it is quiet inside—much quieter than my ‘96 Outback. The new model offers excellent outward visibility in all directions, besting the CRV and RAV4 significantly in the view through the rear glass, which is cut somewhat more deeply into the rear hatch.

I especially like the simplicity of the controls and the well-placed display for the clock/mpg meter/outside temp gauge. Hell’s bells, I even like the way the thing looks, clean and simple, well-tailored and logical.

Subaru has, I think, a winner. They have made the Forester conform better to the fickle and fashion-conscious US market without much sacrifice in the traditional Subaru virtues. According to another review, Forester will ascend grades that the CRV would not. It may not look like what we think a Subaru should look like. Subarus appear to evolve, while Toyotas, for example, change their clothing every six months. When what we became accustomed to gets replaced, we may feel like the rug has been pulled from under our feet. Time stands still for no one.

The car business is fiercely competitive. It’s a minor miracle that little Subaru remains in the US market—but it’s a tribute to the strength of their engineering and some pretty smart decisions, as well as to those who remain loyal to a car whose character has remained largely intact through all the vicissitudes of the marketplace.

I drove the new Forester and liked the ride and handling, liked the interior and dash layout, loved the huge sunroof on the Premium Pkg, and the turning radius is great. The real clincher was that it is available with a 5-speed manual…I don’t like automatics…manuals are more fun, even if more work, but most of the competition quit offering it as an option.

So this is a vehicle I can haul my Labrador Retrievers in, carry my bikes and kayak on the roof, pull a small utility trailer with, drive to the ski slopes after a fresh snow, and still get decent gas mileage.

Is the Forester perfect? No, but it has all the features I want at a very competitive price.

Do people really get worked up about people movers like this? I cannot imagine spending any time worrying about what plastic is on what surface in what is a shopping cart. The all-wheel drive counts for something, and the aesthetics are reasonably pleasing.

Guess I don’t see why anyone would spend more than 15 minutes deciding between this or any of its contemporaries, they’re all pretty similar.

There are many Subaru marketing and comparison videos out there on YouTube, etc. that clearly show why Subaru designed the ‘09 Forester the way they did. Other than so-so interior (but equal to RAV4), the car’s improved in every way over last years’, and the Turbo version handles and rides like a euro without crashing its suspension on bad roads.

A couple of years ago a Subaru officer, when asked about door intrusion protection remarked (paraphrased): ‘Why, if you are trying to stop intrusion through the door, add mass to the window frame instead of where you need to prevent intrusion?’

That logical, common-sense engineering approach is what made Subarus special cars that operated at a level that was a couple of cuts above their price point. Alas! Two rules eem to be universally true: everything ends in entropy and everything else heads towards the average.

With the new Forester, it seems Subaru is following the second of those laws with increased velocity. Very sad!

I own a ‘97 WRX hatchback, and I love my little car. It gets good mileage, all-terrains with trucks (at least in lower clearance terrain), is zippy, fun-to-drive, and reliable. No one else made a car like that when I got it. That was Subaru, and I thought I had found my niche auto-maker. I still plan to get a Legacy GT in a couple years, but from the looks of it I’d bet it won’t be a new one.

It seems to me that ever since the big motherships started beaming Subie up (starting with the G to the M) they have been watering their identity down, and slowly ruining their brand. Everything about the Tribeca, even the name of the thing, was a shameless focus-group tested ploy for the yuppies, who then went and bought Prii, oops – Subaru missed that (hybrid) bus so-to-speak.

Then Subaru made the Impreza into some kind of androgynous wagon. It looks like a 21st Century Japanese take on the American malaise era for a small car. And they want so much money for a WRX STi that I can go seriously consider a Bimmer as competetion. Dangerous for Subaru to be doing that with a car that looks like that.

Subaru I think is ideally positioned to do something that I hear rumbling about on the forums at TTAC from time-to-time as being desirable, and that is to build a true light truck. Not a Brat or something like that either, but a real light truck. Their AWD tech and boxer motors would be an ideal fit for that application, and nobody makes a real light truck anymore. I noticed the other day one of the new Tacomas sitting next to an old C/K long bed single cab Chevy at a stoplight. By the time you’ve got the “crew” cab (on a small truck? Who we kidding here?), bumper junk, and all the plastic bolted (glued?) on to the Tacoma, it looks bigger than the “full size” Chevy of yore. Toyota doens’t make anything like the cool trucks they used to, the stuff that got them their good rep in that business, and Subaru could step right in and pick up the slack, if they want to expand.

But they for a few years had a formula for cars and yuppie-yutes that was a winner, they should stop trying to choke their goose before it stops laying the golden eggs.

How to save your Automatic tranny:

Don’t drive stop and go and Don’t accelerate and race your car do the Red Light (it is red light anyway why rush).

Are they really that important in a car?

Do we really need leather interior,leather seat or leather dash.Common Consumer be practical and whassup with that nature lovers are weird and stephen is much better looking. Stephen doesn’t even drive a car and tell me all nature lovers smoke pot.

To tell you frankly Leather is old school.
The Fab is now Carbon Fiber Interior.

for better cleaning and durability and less expensive than killing an animal

Oh by the way Subaru’s are popular cars in Massacusetts just like Saab

I just paid some $$$ to fix a Subaru transmission issue a few weeks ago, so right now I’m not of the opinion that Subie trannys are more reliable than some competitors’.

Fast forward 20 years, and all those Volvo owners have moved out their Volvos and into Subarus. When ever there is too slow traffic for no apparent reason, you can count on the front car being a Subaru wagon of some type ( or a taxi making random, unobvious stops, turns, reverses etc.). And this is from someone who drives a Prius (the official car of Seattle!).

What’s the deal here?

The deserved criticism of Subaru’s attempts at creating a unique visual identity in the old Impreza and B9 Tribeca (grill looks like a flying vagina) have resulted in a series of blandly-styled, but inoffensive Subarus that blend into the background.

The base Forester is one of the few, if not only, small CUVs available with a manual transmission as standard. It lets its driver wring a little bit more performance and gas mileage from the Boxer engine than one could get from the comparable Honda CR-V (5-speed automatic only) or the 4-cylinder Toyota RAV4 (4-speed automatic only).

The continued availability of the 5-speed manual in the base models offer a compelling reason to buy a Forester. (However, if you want an automatic, buy the CR-V).

And maybe Subaru will work on improving the performance and fuel mileage of ALL of their vehicles in the future.

In the meantime, if I wanted a mini SUV, I would wait for VW’s Tiguan especially one with a Tdi under the hood.

I immediately knew the new Forester would have the same interior, because it is Impreza-based. I also knew that the turbo automatic would lose the beautiful VTD center planetary differential and the rear limited slip differential, because the WRX had lost them, replaced by sensors, a chip and hope. Much cheaper to produce electronics than nicely finished hardened steel gears.

So, like Joe O., I purchased a Legacy GT. The 5EAT has those special diffs, plus a soft interior. It has the VDC as well, so it has belt and suspenders, both analog (mechanical diffs) and digital (VDC). The VDC has never operated in even the worst snowstorm or sheet ice this past winter here in the far northeast, such is the mechanical surefootedness.

Being old and old-style, I had saved up for 9 years in my car fund, and had the loot when they offed the Legacy GTs cheaper than the new WRXs for cash. There will be no 2009 LGTs as far as I can find out, so the WRXs may well be the precursor to cheaper mechanicals for the new 2010 Legacy.

So I think Michael Karesh’s review here is spot on. We now have no compelling reason to buy Subie’s over anything else. The company has lost the plot, at least in North America, and they are flailing. I wish them no malice, on the contrary – I hope they are around to service my LGT for the foreseeable future. But, as Mr. Karesh says, there has to be a reason for picking a Sube over the competition, and grunty non-turbo engines are offputting to the average punter. (The newer turbo engines are really smooth, for some reason). Plus Subaru seems to be unable to explain in easy language why even their cheap 4EAT transmission is still better than Honda’s Realtime AWD, which is anything but. Calling the Subaru drive system symmetrical AWD is about as useful a description as printing “New and Improved” on a jug of laundry detergent. It means nothing.

Sad. Add Subaru to the list of automakers who forgot why they existed — decent engineering, decent parts, great AWD, not bad interiors, all reasons to drive the road less traveled with a smile on your face. Yep, now we just have Subie Lite, and it’s not very filling.