2024 Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness Yearlong Test: Are There On-Road Compromises?
The off-road Wilderness is the hardest-core Subaru Crosstrek trim level. Does that extra kit get in the way of everyday life?
When MotorTrend puts a vehicle through a yearlong test, we aspire to push limits beyond what a routine test-drive can offer, which often means long trips and contrived experiences designed to suss out edge cases potential buyers need to know about. Part of the ownership experience, however, is living with a car day in, day out, slogging through the monotony of normal. And for the past month, our long-term 2024 Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness has seen quite a lot of normal. How does the off-road trim fare when the roads ahead aren’t all that wild?
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Everyday Living With the Crosstrek
Since returning to Los Angeles from our trip up north, our Subaru has seen a meager diet of short, low-speed runs to work and the occasional errand—the stuff most cars do most of the time. Despite being Subaru’s most hardcore off-road Crosstrek variant, the Wilderness model slides into everyday life without compromise.
The most obvious visual change that comes with the Wilderness trim is the plastic body armor, designed to absorb bumps while traversing trails. Those plastic add-ons have “grown so big on the Crosstrek,” we wrote upon first laying eyes on it, “that they threaten to take over the sides of the car,” commanding more attention than similar cladding on other Wilderness models. However, they still leave plenty of exposed sheetmetal, and no amount of plastic can prevent those random scratches that you might not notice until weeks later, wondering where they came from. One such blemish exists on the driver-side door, origins unknown. It’s small enough that I wouldn’t bother to get it fixed on my own car, and we don’t intend to address it here, either. Nonetheless, every time I look at it, I shake my head at all that black plastic, anthropomorphizing it while asking what good it does. Hopefully we’ll find some trails this summer to get an answer.
Beyond that, though, none of the Wilderness-specific off-road hardware makes its presence known in everyday life, which isn’t usually the case with off-roaders. We know from prior testing the trim level does elevate it off-road, and that its Yokohama Geolandar all-terrain tires contribute to a slight drop in EPA fuel economy (25/29/27 mpg city/highway/combined versus 26/33/29 for Crosstreks with the same engine but without the A/T tires). But those differences don’t feel like compromises day to day as they might in some off-road machines. This is, after all, still a compact Subaru crossover, not a Jeep Wrangler.
Track Testing Translated to Real Life
Speaking of testing, our long-term Crosstrek hadn’t gone through our routine battery of tests until recently. Its numbers largely match those of an identically equipped Crosstrek Wilderness we had in for SUV of the Year testing: 0–60 mph in 7.9 seconds, a 16.1-second quarter mile at 87.2 mph, a 129-foot stop from 60 mph, and 27.9 seconds at 0.59 average g on our figure eight. Others on staff have noted the improved power. “Subaru addressed complaints of a lack of power on the old model by upping the engine size on this one, and it's certainly better,” features editor Scott Evans said during SUV of the Year evaluations. “But it's still pretty slow on the top end.” Through four months, I have no reason to disagree. There are brief moments while merging into quickly moving traffic or attempting to pass on the freeway where I wish for a bit more pickup, but always in a “this could be more fun” sort of way; it’s never left me wanting more when I genuinely need it.
More interesting than the test numbers, though, is a comment road test editor Chris Walton left in his testing notes following the figure eight: “The transmission is quite frustrating. It always seems to be searching for the correct ratio. I have to stab at the throttle on the skidpad even in the Sport setting to maintain some consistent momentum.”
I find that note interesting because another editor, senior features editor Kristen Lee, had this to say in her First Test: “Subaru gets dunked on for its wide use of CVTs, but the system doesn't warrant many complaints in practice. It does its job in the background while you go about your business around town or on the highways.” So is it quite frustrating, or are the complaints unwarranted? Based on my past month of monotonous driving, I’m inclined to side with Lee. Is the transmission perfect? I doubt it, but I can’t recall any time when it has actually bothered me. Maybe you drive to the grocery store with the same intensity Walton displays at the track, but for me, I find the CVT perfectly anonymous, in a good way.
