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2020 Subaru Outback Touring Quick Spin | Balance of power

Driving an Outback in Subaru-crazy Seattle is just about as incognito as one can get. You can further disappear into the Evergreen State background if your Outback is Autumn Green Metallic. And that’s how we blended in for a week in a town where the Outback has been the top-selling vehicle several years, and where Subarus constitute 12% of all vehicles sold (2.5 times the brandÂ’s market share nationwide). A few cars are outselling the Outback so far this year — but that's OK, because one of them is the Subaru Forester. Our disguise for a week was a 2020 Outback Touring, the top trim level, which starts at $38,355 including destination fee. For that sum, which is nearly $12,000 more than a base Outback, you get a quite-nice interior done up in warm Java Brown Nappa Leather, with sunroof, 18-inch black aluminum alloy wheels, satin-chrome side mirrors, body-color door handles, heated steering wheel, and driver-distraction mitigation system. ItÂ’s a handsome package, especially the 11.6-inch Starlink touchscreen built into a monolithic, smooth black glass center stack, though the HVAC controls in particular are a curious mix of analog and digital. And it all rides on a new, stiffer platform — making the Outback inwardly new from the ground up, even though it was outwardly designed to look pretty much like it always has. ItÂ’s a conservative, donÂ’t-mess-with-success design approach that Subaru also used on the new Forester. What you donÂ’t get, at least not on this Outback tester nor the one we drove a few months ago in our first-drive review, is a whole lot of power. Both cars were equipped with SubaruÂ’s base 2.5-liter boxer four-cylinder engine that doesnÂ’t reach its peak 182 horsepower until 5,800 rpm, with peak torque of 176 pound-feet at 4,400 rpm. Curb weight on the Touring is 3,772 pounds. Horsepower is up by a mere seven over last year, torque by two pound-feet. Here in Subaru city, IÂ’ve known Outback owners who praise their car's virtues but almost apologetically slip in a qualifier: A little more power wouldÂ’ve been nice. Subaru has a solution for that — the optional XT engine, a 2.4-liter turbocharged engine putting out a thatÂ’s-more-like-it 260 horsepower and 277 lb-ft of torque. The turbo four takes the place of the 3.6-liter flat-six that was offered through 2019. But the MSRPs for the XT trims are a big step up – $4,300 to go from Limited to Limited XT, $2,350 from Touring to Touring XT – to a total ranging from $35,905 to $40,705.

Subaru says Forester logs 8,000 JDM orders in first month, 4x expectations

The 2014 Subaru Forester is not on sale yet here in the US, but it has been on sale in Japan since the middle of last month. In that time, Subaru says that the 8,149 customer orders it has received have more than quadrupled the original expectation of just 2,000 units.
To go along with these impressive orders so far, Subaru has also provided a breakdown of exactly what initial customers are ordering, and based on the numbers provided, it would appear that early customers are choosing well-equipped models. This includes almost 90 percent of all models being ordered with the new Subaru EyeSight system, and while close to two-thirds of the Forester models are equipped with the base 2.0-liter engine, the turbocharged Forester 2.0XT is the most popular individual trim level accounting for almost 40 percent of the orders out of four available trim levels. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues as more Foresters hit dealers, but this is definitely a good sign for the compact crossover right out of the gate.
There's a brief press release after the jump that gives a full breakdown of customer orders so far in Japan.

What grownups drive (fast) | 2017 Subaru Forester 2.0XT Touring Review

If you look at the 2017 Forester XT Touring and don't notice the changes compared to the 2016 model, we won't blame you. They're subtle. The naturally aspirated models get a new front bumper that matches the surrounding body color, but the turbo model we drove still has the black gap in the middle. The grille gives up the wide mesh look for a pattern that subtly accentuates the Pleiades badge. Look into the updated Forester's eyes, though, and you might see a new spark of beauty, with a redesign that prominently features a surrounding strip of LEDs. There's also a new color; our test vehicle came in the new-for-2017 Sepia Bronze Metallic paint, a tasteful brown(-ish) that might let you get away with going longer between washes. On the inside, this Forester had the new Saddle Brown leather interior exclusive to the Touring trim. It's the rich sort of brown that reminds one of a rustic but well-appointed hunting lodge, where one would expect to catch a whiff of pipe tobacco and whiskey. It just smelled like a normal car, though, at least before we got in it. Touring spec also offers up a heated steering wheel and seats, the automotive equivalent to a chair in front of the fireplace. Most touch points are attended to with sturdy-feeling materials, and the most important one – the wheel­ – feels grippy and comfortable without being overwrought. The front seats are firm but comfortable, with an upright seating position. They're a bit reminiscent of those moderately expensive high-back office chairs, except in this case, the office rolls around with the seat. Sitting behind them isn't bad, either, as they're shaped in a way that carves out extra room for the knees. The door openings are large enough to make ingress and egress an easy task, which is a merciful thing, especially when wrestling a car seat into the back. As for our own rear-facing kid carrier, it fits in the Forester just fine, but, when clipped in the passenger side, means the front occupant is just one click closer to the dash than they'd be ideally. Their knees won't be crunched into the glove box, though (that's a position some of us have learned to live with in other cars with a rear-facing car seat installed). The view from the driver's seat is exceptional. Tall, wide windows let you keep track of everything that's going on around you. They also bring in a lot of light, and piloting the Forester is a bit like driving a greenhouse on wheels.