Bought a 2014 Subaru Forester
 

We are now a 1.5 Subaru family. I count the FR-S as half a Subaru. :)

2014 Forester is a nice pick! Gratz!

Interested to hear your impressions after you put a few miles on it. We have had a 2007 Forester XT since new. It is getting close to 100k miles on it, and I've been thinking about trading it and my wife's Fusion in on a new Forester.

When the car is paid off I'll be trading my truck for a forester. On a test drive it seems to ride better than my wife's legacy, very smooth. I have to admit also, with our first child on the way, it's tempting to trade both my car and truck for an XT.

We got it for safety mainly. it aced the small offset test. It's the wife's car so I won't drive much. The base model accelerates fine. The ride isn't luxury by any means, but it's alright. It corners fine, not like a POS prius. lots of space in there. stereo is mediocre. bluetooth is problematic but it's probably my phone's fault.

we live on a canyon road, the type of place where small offset crashes are most common.

the XT fuel economy is too stinky. plus i would hate a cvt with a turbo. I'd feel shortchanged.

Yeah it is too bad Subaru dropped the manual transmission on the XT five years or so ago. I'd be tempted to get the manual trans on a new Forester, but it gets 3 mpg worse (highway and combined) than the CVT, and only 1 better than the XT, at least it doesn't require premium, which saves about 25 cents a gallon around here. We have had a car with a CVT before (Ford Freestyle), and while I much prefer manual transmissions, I didn't dislike the CVT any worse than the auto cars we've owned. We average 22-24mpg in mixed driving on our XT with highway mpg as high as 27-28 if we take it easy.

I did look at the XT when it first came out, years ago. It was pretty fun. I just couldn't justify it at the time as a single guy. Now with the FR-S, i have no need for an XT. My wife certainly doesn't care.

Good points. I've sometimes wished we would have gotten a N/A Forester instead of the XT since I always had other fun/fast cars, and while the turbo was fun, since it was our family car, it just shortened the time it took for my son to get carsick on occasion.

If my calculations are correct it has cost us around $7000 extra over the past seven years and 85k miles to own the XT vs a non-turbo, with the extra cost of premium gas, the lower mpg of the turbo, and the difference in cost of the vehicles. I'm curious to hear what your real world gas mileage will be after a few months of use.

I'll let you know the mpg. I'm not sure on your calculations for cost. For the XT, you pay may for insurance, premium gas, MPG, and initial price. Then you get more back when you sell.

Edmunds gives the 2012 Touring XT as a 5-year TCO of ~$51,000
The 2012 Touring X gets ~$48,000

Then again, I don't trust Edmunds numbers.

So how many forests have you forested so far in your forester?

I urge you guys to try the new XT w/CVT. It's very capable and I _liked_ the CVT.
I test drove it a week or two ago right after driving the new Q50S and Caddy ATS 3.6 RWD with magnetic shocks. Forester leaned less than the Infinity in corners, and it didn't feel any slower than those 320-330HP cars. CVT was very quick to get the revs to the max HP range, when I stepped on it. It pulled quite hard even in 'intelligent' mode.

And 28mpg hwy seems more than adequate for a small AWD SUV.

Old XTs never impressed me, mostly due to ancient 4EAT tranny.