2022 Subaru Forester Wilderness Review _ The Forester gets WILD.

The Subaru Forester is midway through its fifth generation, and it just displaced the Outback as Subaru's best-selling vehicle. With that new crown comes a new trim, Wilderness. It falls right between Sport and Limited, and that's what we're driving today. The Forester is the second of the Subaru lineup to get this more rugged, adventure-focused trim following the Outback. In general, this means more off-roading and camping-focused features for the weekend warriors. We'll get into all of that, but first, thanks for joining us. Please make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube channel. And remember, if you have a car to sell, you can now handle that 100% online with CarGurus. All you have to do is plug in your information. We'll source a top-dollar offer from our network of thousands of dealers, and we'll even come and pick up your car. It must be the easiest way to sell a car these days. So, the 2022 Forester Wilderness. Let's start with this color. Is it brown? Is it green? From where I'm standing, the answer is yes. But Subaru have cleared it up by naming the color Autumn Green Metallic. So there we go. Officially, it's green. The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that green is not the only color we're looking at here. There's also a lot of black and some copper. Because this is the Wilderness, we have a lot more of this matte black body cladding than on any other Forester, which really helps emphasize the much larger hexagonal wheel arches that we have on this trim. Even if you couldn't read the badge, you'd still know by the black cladding and the anodized copper accents that we are looking at the Wilderness version of the Forester. The entire Forester lineup was refreshed for 2022. The front fascia, the grille, and the headlights were all redesigned, and Subaru says that each of these elements has characteristics that vary with the trim. On the Wilderness, we can see that the hexagonal grille is blacked out, and the fog lights have a hexagonal design made up of smaller hexagons. Even this plastic has a hexagonal texture. The fog lights appear much deeper set on the Wilderness than they do on the other Foresters because of its unique front bumper, which is really substantial because this car is meant to get down and dirty. We've got a skid plate down here to protect the engine and the undercarriage from rough terrain, and we've got this matte black decal on the hood, which is not there just to look like a muscle car. It reduces glare. We also have a matte black Forester badge, and the 17-inch wheels have a matte black finish. The rear end does not look quite so different from last year's Forester. We still have these lobster claw taillights, which really do nothing to discourage our local New England Subaru stereotypes, and then we have this part, which is body-colored on some Foresters, obviously blacked out on others. It's got that same textured hexagonal pattern, and so does the unique rear bumper. Inside, more hexagons. They're everywhere. We've got this hexagonal pattern in the Star-Tex material of the seats, which they only come in gray, but they are water-repellent, so even though it's not super pretty, it is functional. The seats are also heated because Premium trims and up have the all-weather package. The top trim, Touring, has heated front and rear seats and a heated steering wheel. It also has a power-adjustable front passenger seat, which we do not, but we do at least have the power-adjustable driver's seat, and we have the reclining rear seats. My first impression when I opened the door was that Subaru really does not want you to forget that you're driving the Wilderness trim. We've got these little tags, more anodized copper accents, the copper-colored contrast stitching, and Wilderness logos everywhere. We have great visibility in here with the large windshield, the slim A-pillars, and the low beltline, so if you're going somewhere scenic on your Wilderness adventure, this car is not going to hamper your views. Even on a gray day like today, the moonroof lets in a lot of natural light, and even though this moonroof cuts down an inch of headroom, it still feels like plenty. I actually had a six-foot-two passenger in here just the other day, and his only comment on this whole ceiling region was that the moonroof makes it feel nice and open. We have 43.3 inches of legroom in the front seats and 39.4 inches of legroom back here. That's more than a Toyota RAV4, and it feels like plenty. Rear seat occupants also get two USB ports. They're under this sort of awkward plastic cap back here, along with their vents. As part of the sole available option package for the Wilderness, we've got a power rear gate with several features—automatic close, height memory function, and vehicle lock button. The Wilderness has a full-size spare, as any off-roader should, and it even has its own tire pressure monitor, so you'll always be prepared like a Boy Scout. We have 69.1 cubic feet of cargo volume with the rear seats lowered and 26.9 with them up. You can carry plenty up top, too. These new ladder-style roof rails are capable of supporting 220 pounds while the car is in motion and 800 while it's parked, so you could camp on top of it. All Subaru crossovers have its symmetrical all-wheel drive, so there's a certain default level of capability expected when it comes to things like snow and rough terrain. So what does the Wilderness trim bring to the table? Well, for starters, it has double the towing capacity of any other Forester at 3,000 pounds. That's 800 pounds, or an entire roof rack's worth, more than the Ford Bronco Sport Badlands. But because this is the Wilderness, it has dual-function X-Mode, so it has the snow-dirt setting and also a deep snow and mud setting. We have a raised suspension that gives us 9.2 inches of ground clearance. It has a breakover angle of 21 degrees, and because the Forester has shorter overhangs than the Outback, we have an approach angle of 23.5 degrees and an improved departure angle of 25.4 degrees. This is all more conducive to off-roading, as are the Yokohama Geolander all-terrain tires. How far up the beaten path would you go with this setup? Let us know in the comments. The Wilderness gets the same 2.5-liter boxer 4-cylinder engine as all the other Foresters. It makes 182 horsepower, 176 pound-feet of torque, and quite the racket. It doesn't really bother me too much on this trim. Since it's supposed to be rugged, I don't mind feeling like the engine is doing some work, but if I were considering the Touring trim, the top one, I'd really like it to be quieter, and I'd really like to have the option for more power. Maybe the turbo that's available on the Outback? Just to choose a completely random example. Foresters also all have Subaru's Lineartronic CVT, or Continuously Variable Transmission, but the Wilderness is the only one that has an 8-speed manual mode controlled with these paddle shifters. You do get a 7-speed manual mode on Sport, Limited, and Touring trims. The Wilderness has the worst fuel economy of the bunch, at 25 miles per gallon city and 28 highway, as compared to 26 city and 33 highway for any other Forester. Good compact SUVs and crossovers blend the capability of a utility vehicle with the handling and the ride quality of a car, and the Forester does do that pretty well. Its on-road manners are perfectly acceptable. Maybe not good enough for tea with the Queen, but fine for dinner with your in-laws. You can make use of Subaru's SI Drive to select Intelligent Mode for fuel economy, or Sport Sharp Mode, which is basically just meant to be more fun. It makes the CVT hold gears longer so you can accelerate faster, which I really recommend, because without that, this thing is pokey. It does not accelerate fast even with Sport Sharp Mode. I can put my foot all the way to the floor, and I still have time to think about it and change my mind before it really gets up to speed. I mentioned the great visibility. You can actually enhance it further with this front-facing camera, which is accessed via a button down here. Found it. This is a special feature for the Wilderness that comes in handy when you need to scope out the rocks you're driving over. Most of the stuff on the dash here is standard on other Foresters as well. I like that the tachometer and speedometer are analog. We also have a 4.2-inch color LCD display, and then this 6.3-inch color multi-function display which can show lots of different things, including operating status, fuel consumption, and pitch and roll angles. Ours has the only available option package for the Wilderness, which for $1,850 adds NAV to the Starlink 8-inch multimedia system and gets us the 9-speaker Harman Kardon sound system. A 6-speaker sound system would be standard here. Let's see. What else? We have keyless access, dual-zone climate control, 4G LTE Wi-Fi capability, wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity. None of this is groundbreaking, but it is all stuff that you'd like to have. And speaking of things that would be nice to have, all Foresters get LED steering responsive headlights, a rear seat reminder system, and the fourth version of Subaru's EyeSight driver assist technology, which includes adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist and sway warning, and pre-collision braking and throttle management. This one also has blind spot detection with rear cross-traffic alert, reverse automatic braking, and automatic emergency steering. The base Forester starts at $25,395. The Forester Wilderness starts at $33,020. But ours, with that option package and the $1,125 destination fee, comes to $35,795. Now, if you look at the 2022 Subaru Forester brochure, the Wilderness has the most standard features out of any of the trims, and it handles pretty well on road. And as we've seen, it probably has just about anything that a weekend warrior could want. So how does it stack up to the competition? Well, both the Ford Bronco Sport Badlands and the Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk cost more, and while they do have more power, neither can hold or haul as much stuff as this can. The Toyota RAV4 TRD Offroad actually does have more power, cargo space, and towing capacity, but it's more expensive still at $38,130. But that may not matter because Subaru shoppers, by and large, tend to want to stick with Subaru, and so the Forester Wilderness's biggest competition may come in the form of sibling rivalry from the Subaru Outback Wilderness. Keep an eye out because Cliff did a comparison video between the two Wilderness models, and it's coming out in a few days. In the meantime, I can tell you that the Outback Wilderness starts at $37,695, but it's bigger than the Forester, it can do more, and it comes with a turbo. So if you're in the market for a rough-and-ready Subaru, the question that you have to ask yourself is, what do you really want this crossover for? And exactly how much extra space and capability are you going to need to make that happen? Is it $4,500 worth? Maybe so. At any rate, that's it for today. Thanks for watching. Please make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube channel, and head over to CarGurus.com to read our full written review of the 2022 Subaru Forester. And remember, check back soon because we'll be driving something else next week.