#Crosstrek

I recently reviewed the 2024 Subaru Crosstrek Premium and my biggest critique, at least from a driving dynamics standpoint, was a lack of guts.

The 2024 Subaru Crosstrek Sport is meant to address that criticism. Want a Crosstrek that’s a bit more fun? This is your trim of choice.

Reliability, when it comes to cars, has at least two meanings. One meaning involves a model’s likelihood to suffer mechanical maladies over time. The other involves how well it does its prescribed job.

Subaru has made its bones by being very good at the latter.

Subaru has given its popular Crosstrek crossover its most significant update in quite some time. The little SUV has been changed front, back, and sideways. But the change that grabbed all the headlines involved the expansion of the Wilderness lineup, which now includes the Crosstrek.

When the Subaru crew showed off the original Crosstrek, it was a lifted and ruggedized version of the Impreza. Now, they’re introducing a Wilderness trim of that vehicle, a – you guessed it – lifted and ruggedized version of the Crosstrek.

This means they’ve Crosstrek’d the Crosstrek.

Amid a digital backdrop showing stark b-roll scenes from various National Parks, under a cloud of smoke haze and inexplicable soap bubbles, and flanked by a booth filled with rescue puppies, the 2024 Subaru Crosstrek compact crossover was revealed today at the Chicago Auto Show. While this third-generation crossover does not look markedly different from the prior model, perhaps the most notable announcement was that production of some Crosstrek models will be shifted from Japan to the venerable Subaru of Indiana Automotive plant in Lafayette, Indiana.

Subaru will launch an updated Crosstrek in the United States next year and showcased the Japanese model on Thursday to whet our appetites.

Though nobody at the company seems overly eager to reinvent a model offering such enviable sales figures. Most of the changes seem to be aesthetic in nature, with the exterior seeing some new creases – resulting in a more complicated and pleasing overall shape. There’s also been an increase in the number of plastic panels used on the vehicle’s exterior. However, this doesn’t look as disagreeable as it sounds.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – or at least that’s the tack Subaru of America seems to be taking with their popular Crosstrek. Forging ahead for the 2023 model year, the little tall wagon crossover sees a microscopic bump in price and the addition of different paint options. There’s also a new trim level for those of you who play ridiculously detailed games of Car Bingo.

As we reported some months ago, the 2021 Subaru Crosstrek corrects a flaw that’s hitched a ride with the otherwise useful and appealing little vehicle since its inception: a lack of power.

Even with a very mild power bump for 2018, the lifted-and-cladded Impreza five-door’s 2.0-liter Boxer four-cylinder still struggled under the burden of heavy loads. Punching through deep, wet snow also revealed its shortcomings.

Turning the five-door Impreza into the lifted Crosstrek was a brilliant bit of strategy for Subaru. Sales of the jacked compact soared following its late-2012 release, rising year after year until 2018, where it managed 144,384 U.S. sales.

While the model slipped last year, Subaru is not content to leave things be. Later this year, the automaker will answer a long-standing cry from Subaru loyalists and endow the Crosstrek with moar power.

Spend a few minutes talking to a normal, regular person, and they’ll probably reveal very little knowledge of a vehicle’s mechanics or specs while boasting plenty of knowledge of a brand’s (or vehicle’s) marketing efforts and media coverage.

The general consensus, at least according to your author’s mother, is that dogs help sell cars. Full stop. At the very least, they sprinkle a helping of feel-good fairy dust over a brand, leaving a positive impression of the company in the minds of viewers. Audience manipulation is the sole purpose of advertising.

As Subaru walks away from its most recent sales month with yet another healthy volume increase, however, one model seems to have run out of momentum. It remains to be seen if a heaping helping of dogs can turn it around.

The stereotypical Subaru customer has always been overly concerned with Johnny Polar Bear, so it’s been a bit of a surprise that the company hasn’t had a plug-in hybrid offering in their lineup.

That changes next year, with the introduction of the 2019 Crosstrek Hybrid. Subaru must be employing a few wizards in the engineering department because despite the new hybrid producing less power and weighing more (a lot more), the company is claiming the electrified Crosstrek is a full second quicker to sixty than the standard car.

After the Impreza-based Subaru Outback Sport failed to catch fire with all the ignition of the Legacy-based Subaru Outback, Subaru’s approach differed only slightly when the XV Crosstrek debuted as an upsized rival for vehicles such as the Nissan Juke. Beating the Honda HR-V, Chevrolet Trax, and Jeep Renegade to the punch, the XV Crosstrek produced consistent and significant year-over-year U.S. sales growth.

From the 53,741 sold in 2013, Subaru reported a 32-percent improvement in 2014, a 25-percent gain in 2015, and a further 8-percent uptick to 95,677 in 2016.

Now that Subaru is preparing to launch the second-generation Crosstrek — the XV tag disappeared after MY2015 — it’s becoming increasingly apparent that Subaru isn’t just making hay off the Crosstrek by selling a whole bunch of Impreza-based tall hatchbacks.

Subaru also sells Crosstreks to the right people.

Sajeev,

We have three cars in our household that see regularly use, but we are considering going down to two vehicles in an attempt to save some money. However, instead of just getting rid of one of those three cars, we are trading in two of them toward a newer vehicle that we plan to keep long term.

If an “XV” drops off a rear liftgate in the woods of Colorado, Oregon or New England and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?

Even if you’re in a bright blue 2016 Subaru Crosstrek, apparently not. Last month, Subaru announced it’s slightly different Crosstrek — complete with new front bumper, grille and headlights — and many people didn’t notice the XV is now gone. The car gets the same Series.HyperBlue treatment as the BRZ and WRX et al., and blind-spot detection.

(Oh, and you can probably still get a screaming deal on a Hybrid Crosstrek.)

In 1919, then-Army Major Dwight D. Eisenhower embarked on a transcontinental journey with a military convoy to show off to the country the mechanical might used to conquer the Kaiser.

From Washington D.C. to San Francisco, Eisenhower traversed the Lincoln Highway over 62 days. The going was relatively easy until Kansas, but the hardest part, he wrote, came in Utah.

“Aug. 20 (1919) Departed Salt Lake City, 6:30 am. … Last 6 miles was natural desert trail of alkali dust and fine sand up to 2 (feet) deep, with numerous chuckholes. No rain for 18 weeks and traction exceedingly difficult,” Eisenhower wrote in his journal.

“Aug. 22 (1919) Departed Granite Rock (Utah) 6:30 a.m. … Personnel utterly exhausted by tremendous efforts, and will rest at Black Point. … Reduced morale.”

Admittedly, my journey in a 2015 Subaru XV Crosstrek would be less dramatic. In Utah, Eisenhower reported the convoy of 80 vehicles took 7.5 hours to do 15 miles in near-biblical sand in lieu of bad roads. I could manage 80 miles an hour in the diminutive hatchback with 148 horsepower — which likely has more horsepower than the entire 1919 convoy. Resemblance? I have a few.