Subaru doesnt really do new very often. Its not that the company doesnt completely redesign, restyle, and re-engineer its vehicles. Its that those changes are hidden under nearly identical wrappers.

　　The latest Forester is another example of that. The 2025 Subaru Forester shares nothing at all with the previous generation, but if you had told me it was just a new front grille, I wouldnt question you. Slip behind the wheel, though, and its immediately obvious that this Forester is a completely different vehicle.

　　Subaru brought me to the mountains east of Missoula, Mont., to find out just how thoroughly it has improved the Forester for 2025. The drive route for the media drive was more gravel and dirt than pavement, and includes at least one ghost town.

　　In short: Subaru understands that Forester buyers want loads of space, excellent visibility, and a ride thats comfortable on rough surfaces. The all-new 2025 Forester delivers all of those attributes and ditches the tin-can feel that has plagued the model since its inception.

　　2025 Subaru Forester

　　(Photo/Evan Wiliams) Specs Engine 2.5L flat-four Horsepower 180 Torque 178 lb.-ft. Mileage 26/33/29 mpg city, highway, combined Cargo 29.6 cu. ft. with seats up, 74.4 cu. ft. folded, 27.5/69.1cu. ft. with panoramic roof Towing 1,500 lbs. Pros Excellent visibility Smooth ride on or off pavement Spacious cabin Tons of safety features Cons Sluggish engine Slow infotainment Disconnected steering Anonymous styling Evan Williams Subaru 2025 Subaru Forester Review

　　(Photo/Evan Williams) New From the Frame Up OK, the last-gen Forester wasnt exactly a tin can, but noise, vibration, and harshness were not areas where it scored well. To fix it, Subaru has completely redesigned how it builds the model.

　　The 2025 Forester starts as a full inner frame, where the pillars are welded to the rest of the models structure before the exterior sheet metal is attached. It used to be the other way around, and the pillars were attached after the rear fenders.

　　This technique lets Subaru add more welds and use three times the structural adhesive it used before. The factory robots can get to places they couldnt reach before. The result is a stiffer unibody that youll notice the first time you leave the pavement.

　　Combine the stiffness with more sound insulation, and its a significant improvement. To prove it, Subaru sent us down more gravel roads than any other crossover drive Ive ever attended. More than 100 miles of unpaved roads and paths. Washboard, ruts, loose rocks, the whole lot.

　　The new Forester didnt rattle, and it didnt complain. Even in a Touring trim with 19-inch wheels, the ride was as comfortable as anything short of a Chevy Colorado ZR2. Or, well, an Outback.

　　(Photo/Evan Williams) Comfortable Outdoor Adventures Subaru says that its buyers are far more interested in outdoor sports and activities than its competitors. Several times more interested, depending on which competitor youre looking at. That makes rough road driving more important to Subaru.

　　One of the more stressful parts of off-pavement driving is vibration. Spending hours getting the paint-shaker treatment from the suspension is bad enough. Add in the forearm workout you get from a steering wheel doing its best to follow the terrain, and it can be exhausting.

　　Foresters long-travel suspension curbs the first part of that. Prior Foresters felt more like other crossovers; they were stiff, not compliant. For 2025, Subaru has softened it. Now the model drives more like a Crosstrek or Outback. It soaks up washboard instead of punishing the driver.

　　The result is more body roll but more ride comfort. This isnt a sports sedan, so give me that roll and that comfort every day of the week.

　　(Photo/Evan Williams) WRX Steering Used to Reduce Vibration To solve steering shake on rough terrain, Subaru grabbed the steering rack from the WRX. Its a dual-pinion steering rack, and thats the trick.

　　Nearly all vehicle steering systems have their electric assist motors mounted to the same shaft as the steering wheel. It works very well in nearly all situations, but with high-torque electric power steering you can sometimes end up fighting with, or at least feeling, the power steering trying to keep up.

　　The dual pinion system removes the power steering motor from the shaft that goes to the steering wheel and puts it on a second shaft. The power steering motor turns the rack but doesnt apply torque directly to the steering wheel like it does in conventional systems.

　　It isnt unique to Subaru, but it is still uncommon. The result is virtually zero kickback or vibration through the wheel on some serious dirt roads.

　　The side effect of that steering isolation is on the highway. On pavement, the Foresters steering feels like a video game wheel — like its not connected to everything.

　　Its probably not an issue for most Forester buyers. All youll really notice while driving is that the steering is always easy to turn. But it is also vague in highway bends, requiring more correction than most vehicles, even in what should be a constant-radius turn.

　　(Photo/Evan Williams) Sport Trim Fixes Steering Disconnect If that slack steering and soft ride are an issue for you, Subaru has a fix. The Forester Sport has shocks that are tuned differently from the rest of the lineup. Its a small change, but it reduces body roll with just a small sacrifice to washboard road comfort.

　　Somehow it also tightens up the steering. The 2025 Forester Sports wheel feels much more direct, leading to less hunting in bends.

　　The Sport trim also gets StarTex fake leather this year instead of cloth, making the model a lot more appealing than the Sport trim it replaces.

　　Altitude or not, the Foresters 2.5L four was not up to the task; (photo/Evan Williams) Refreshed 2.5L Four Still Not Enough Where the new Forester doesnt have any sport at all is under the hood. Subaru has revised its 2.5L boxer-four, dropping the torque curves peak from a frankly silly 5,400 rpm to a still-high 3,700 rpm.

　　The total output is still 180 horsepower and 178 pound-feet of torque. The figures sound like this engine should be adequate, especially with a wider spread of gear ratios for the CVT promising to keep the engine at optimal revs.

　　It isnt. Adequate, that is. The Forester is a slug.

　　I acknowledge that much of our test route was at altitude, but never over 6,000 feet and usually much closer to 3,000. It was high, but not that high. The Forester, meanwhile, couldnt break its tires loose on a dirt road even at the lowest point of the drive. More importantly, even with the big sky sightlines, passing on a two-lane Montana highway was a challenge.

　　Its 60-70-mph times were best measured with an hourglass, and my co-driver on the event had to abort a pass that shouldnt have required a second thought. Downhill grades made it only slightly better. Its 70-mph cruising had the engine high in the power band, making noise and sucking fuel.

　　The Crosstrek with the same engine isnt exactly a rocket ship, but compared to this, its downright zippy.

　　The Forester is big with buyers living on two-lane roads and in the mountains, making this lack of horsepower almost unforgivable. It makes me miss the old turbocharged Forester XT.

　　Subaru has confirmed that a hybrid model is coming, and we can only hope it has more grunt than this version.

　　2025 Forester Keeps Massive Greenhouse

　　Big skies and big visibility from massive windows; (photo/Evan Williams) Subaru seems to have pegged its buyers better than most brands, or at least it is telling us more about what it knows about them. It knows that they like the excellent visibility, for example, which is why every Forester, including this one, has had so much glass.

　　It knows they want cargo space, too, but they dont want a bigger vehicle. If they need a bigger footprint, they get an Outback. So Subaru has tweaked the interior volume, which can now hold 2,160 cans of beans according to the company, but the total is only 0.7 cubic feet bigger than before.

　　Accessory bars hold shelf for extra storage; (photo/Evan Williams) Instead of adding size, Subaru added features. The cargo area is flat, even with the seats down, for a start.

　　There are new accessory hooks that screw into the side walls and tailgate, too. They can be used to hold multitudes of accessories including a shelf that adds a level of storage to the cargo bay. One is conveniently located to hang a light when youre camping or working in the dark.

　　Same Screens as Every Other Subaru

　　(Photo/Evan Williams) The front of the Foresters cabin uses the companys newest infotainment system. Its the same dual 7.0-inch screens on the base trim and larger 11.6-inch touchscreen on the rest that youll find on everything else in the companys lineup beyond the BRZ.

　　Its slightly quicker than the engine to respond to your commands and the graphics are big and clunky. But there are actual dials for volume and tuning, along with always-on-screen buttons for key HVAC features, so it gets points for that.

　　A new digital rearview mirror is standard on Touring, and that trim gets a 360-degree surround view camera as well. The mirror is great for seeing behind you if youre loaded with cargo, but the 360 cams directly behind view distorts obstacles so much as to make spotting people very difficult.

　　New Emergency Stop Assist Added

　　(Photo/Evan Williams) Subaru is big on safety, so one of its more interesting features is Emergency Stop Assist, now on every Forester. It uses the steering and pedal input sensors — or DriverFocus eye monitoring on higher grades — to see if youre still responsive. If you arent, itll slow and stop the vehicle and then turn on the hazards. It will also alert emergency services.

　　What About the 2025 Subaru Forester Wilderness? If youve gotten this far, you might be wondering about the Forester Wilderness, Subarus even more off-road capable trim. So were we.

　　There wont be a Wilderness for 2025. The very popular trim with extra off-road capability isnt going away, but for whatever reason a new-generation model isnt ready.

　　To address that, the 2024 Forester Wilderness will live on for an extra year or so, sold alongside the other 2025 Forester trims. The company gave us the usual we cant comment on future product response, but I would bet on a new Wilderness for the 2026 model year.

　　2025 Subaru Forester Review: Conclusions

　　(Photo/Evan Williams) Forester starts from $29,695 for the base model, which includes roof rails, dual-zone climate, steering responsive LED headlights, and alloy wheels. From there, the lineup includes the $31,995 Premium, $34,495 Sport, $35,995 Limited, and the $39,995 Touring. The new model will be in dealers nationwide by the end of May.

　　Subaru said the chassis is 10% stiffer than before, and that seems to have been the design philosophy behind the whole model. The 2025 Subaru Forester is about 10% better in every way, from the nicer cabin, to the lower noise levels, to the ride.

　　Factory-fit dog cover? Must be a Subaru; (photo/Evan Williams) The new Forester delivers exactly what its buyers wanted with their last one: a vehicle with excellent capability for lugging gear and rough road recreation plus excellent exterior visibility. It added more of the safety features Subaru customers want and a little bit of extra comfort.

　　I wish the horsepower had been increased by that same 10%, but with the outgoing model posting record sales, maybe Subaru knows its buyers arent in a hurry.

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　　Evan Williams Subaru