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Just add power | 2017 Subaru Impreza First Drive

The phrase "all new" gets bandied about way more than it should in the automotive world. Depending on how lenient an automaker's marketing department is feeling at the time, refreshed fascias and a reshuffling of trim levels might earn a tired vehicle the all-new appellation. That's not what Subaru has done with its reborn Impreza compact. Everything from its wheels to its windows has been completely redesigned for 2017. With one glaring exception, the 2017 Subaru Impreza has benefited immensely from its rebirth. The chassis is stiffer, the steering is better, and the interior is larger than before. Like on most Subarus, standard all-wheel drive remains a key selling point. The only thing that's missing is more power. Subaru has gotten guff over the years for its exterior design, with vehicles being called everything from ugly (Baja) to odd (B9 Tribeca). The 2017 Impreza doesn't fit those descriptions. There's just enough surfacing pressed into its bodysides to attract the eye, and the burly flared-shoulder fenders add a muscular stance. Dead-on, the Impreza's face is a bit too nondescript – if it didn't wear a Subaru badge, you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for a Honda or Toyota – but it's not unattractive. The bug eyes of Imprezas past are now nothing more than a historical footnote. The Impreza is again available as either a sedan or, for $500 more, a hatchback. The trunk of the sedan measures 12.3 cubic feet. Obviously, the hatch offers more utility than the sedan, with 20.8 cubic feet of space behind the rear seats and a maximum of 55.3 cubes with the seats folded. That's more than the VW Golf's 52.7 and way more than the new Honda Civic hatchback's maximum of 46.2. The first thing we noticed from the driver's seat is how easy it is to see out of the 2017 Impreza. Visibility is excellent in every direction, and all that glass means the cabin feels light and airy. Large, easy-to-read speedometer and tachometer gauges sit front and center, but the rest of the information needed for the task of driving is spread across three different LCD screens. The first sits between the two gauges, and the second is atop the center stack. The third screen is the largest, measuring 6.5 inches on base 2.0i models and 8.0 inches in Sport and Limited trims.

2019 Subaru Forester Long-Term Update | It's gold wheel time!

Our long-term 2019 Subaru Forester is heading into the new year with a new set of shoes. Subaru’s all-wheel-drive system works perfectly fine, but all-wheel power is no replacement for a set of winter tires. And so our search for winter rubber began. However, the search didnÂ’t take that long, as a set of wheels and tires that fit our Forester happened to be laying around Autoblog HQ collecting dust. The wheels just so happened to be lightweight, gold 17-inch Sparco wheels we had previously fitted to our 2015 Subaru WRX long-term tester. Imagine our glee when we pulled these bad boys out of storage.  ItÂ’s only fitting that the blue Subaru in our long-term test fleet is also fitted with gold wheels as a tribute to all the gold-wheeled Subaru rally legends. The new Forester is nothing like a WRX or STI, but this setup has us smiling every time we walk out to the car. Take a nice, long scroll through the gallery above. We canÂ’t stop obsessing over how much better they make the new Forester look. Maybe a special edition package Â… just a thought, Subaru. Mounted on these wheels are new Michelin X-Ice winter tires. WeÂ’ve already driven it through a couple snowfalls in the midwest region, and the tires make this crossover a nearly unstoppable winter force. We hope to get some serious snow this winter that allows us to really take advantage of the new tires and the ForesterÂ’s high 8.7-inch ground clearance. More on that and the ForesterÂ’s performance to come. Unfortunately, the spare set of wheels we had lying around didnÂ’t have tire pressure monitoring sensors for the Forester sitting next to them. Until the little yellow light in the dash starts annoying us, weÂ’re going to forego the expense of buying a new TPMS at the Subaru dealer — we imagine many owners skip the extra $150 or so for the sensors and check their tire pressure the old-fashioned way with winter wheels, too. After all, the tire pressure gauge still exists, and it works splendidly. Watch out for another Forester update soon, as we get into some of the things weÂ’ve liked and disliked over the past few months. Related video:

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.