#SubaruCrosstrek

Due to travel, I got a little behind on giving you the Cliff's Notes on what I've been testing, so you'll get two this week.

First up: The 2024 Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness.

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.

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.

Subaru has long been a relatively small automaker building products for niche markets. It’s been well-documented how the company, decades ago, specifically targeted certain demographics, becoming wildly popular and inspiring serious owner loyalty. They have done an incredible job doing so, but some more mainstream buyers may still not have the brand front of mind when shopping.

Efforts have been made at more middle-America-friendly fare, most notably the Ascent as their second attempt at the large crossover class which is proving to be a solid, safe choice for buyers. But their bread is buttered with their bread-and-butter smaller cars, much like the 2024 Subaru Crosstrek seen here. And with this redesigned tall wagon, I’m ready to name a new subset of the population that really should be looking at the Pleiades - middle-aged dads.

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.

The 2021 Subaru Crosstrek isn’t changed much, and that’s almost certainly a good thing for Subie.

After all, the Crosstrek, like other Subaru products, is popular with the brand faithful because of its utility abilities. So it behooves Subaru not to screw with it too much.

After we covered American and Japanese trios of $25,000 subcompact crossovers, round three means it’s time for the Korean offerings. But there are only two Korean brands in North America, so today we cover both of their entries and another from Japan.

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.

Earlier this month the insurance comparison site Insurify passed around a study of the car models most likely to receiving speeding tickets. The worst offenders were all rather predictable, with Subaru’s WRX leading the charge. Other models, like the Scion FR-S and Volkswagen Golf GTI, helped paint a clearer picture — one that pointed toward younger motorists with a preexisting interest in speed.

While “Quick Cars Go Fast” isn’t the most compelling headline, Insurify released another study this week detailing America’s most accident-prone vehicles. The speeding study was pretty cut and dried, but this one is a bit more mysterious. What goes into an automobile that makes it perfect for crashing?

With the 2020 Legacy gaining improvements in the form of an optional turbocharged engine, many wonder how long it might be until the rest of Subaru’s mainstream fleet offers the manufacturer’s FA24 motor. The Ascent has it, and we already know the Outback gets it in 2020, but what about Subaru’s other volume models? What about the Crosstrek and Forester?

You’ll have to wait. Apparently, some of Subaru’s models are just too dang popular to receive turbo power. Is this a pathetic excuse or simply a grim reality the automaker must confront? Subaru, obviously, claims the latter and we’re inclined to agree, based on recent evidence. But there remains a silver lining; it probably won’t be this way forever.

We’ve seen this kind of meteoric rise before, so it’s our duty to tell Subaru to “just say no” to drugs. Let’s not have this end in heartbreak for all the fans.

With that important announcement out of the way, it’s time to toss around some numbers — which, at Subaru of America, are quite positive. Despite an industry that sank over 3 percent overall, and with one less selling day than July 2017, last month was the brand’s best July in history, which followed its best June, and May, and… you get the picture. The first half of 2018 was Subaru’s best sales half to date.

Helping the brand achieve a 6.7 percent year-over-year sales increase was the arrival of Subaru’s largest vehicle to date. Go figure, Americans seem to like it.

In a repeat of last year, Subaru of America plans to inflate the price of its 2019 Crosstrek models by a dollar figure that’s small and manageable. Wouldn’t want those buyers to feel used, and with good reason. As the automaker rolls out MSRPs for next year’s physically unchanged models, it’s enjoying record sales for the lifted all-wheel-drive hatchback crossover.

By placing its Impreza five-door hatch in the time machine and pressing the “AMC Eagle” button, Subaru turned what many first saw as just an interesting alternative and turned it into a juggernaut. Colourful pie charts await.

Specialty green models don’t normally end up in lots across the country, at least not initially, and the upcoming Subaru Crosstrek plug-in hybrid is no different.

The resurrected green variant of the wildly popular Crosstrek, which bit the dust following slow sales in 2016, appears late this year as a 2019 model, only this time with real all-electric range and a corresponding plug. It’s a model born of the automaker’s partnership with Toyota, and the Crosstrek PHEV borrows powertrain components from the plug-in Prius Prime. (Whether it’s a direct carryover remains to be seen.)

As your author noted on Twitter the other day, this model seems tailor made to become the darling of hip, achingly progressive enclaves everywhere. While that could one day be the case, four-fifths of U.S. states won’t see the model upon its roll-out.