2025 Subaru Forester First Drive: We Might Still Be Lost in Montana Without It
The Forester’s improved handling, powertrain, safety, and tech helped get us back on track.
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If—hypothetically speaking, of course—we found ourselves without cell service or GPS, we would be just as helpless as everyone else whose memory of a pre-Google Maps world is fading. How do we know? We trekked out to the Paws Up Ranch in Montana to drive the new 2025 Subaru Forester and found out firsthand when we got lost in the kind of way that’s only possible in the forest-covered mountains of Big Sky Country.
Subaru gave us great written directions, but missing a turn by less than a half-mile landed us in a spot with identical landmarks and mileage cues as the road we needed. We’d love to say we adventured off the prescribed route in the spirit of testing Subaru’s newest model and exploring the area's history with Lewis and Clark, feuding native tribes, ghost towns, and clandestine shortcuts. If that were the case, we would have come back to the city with a tale much taller than, “Oops, we made a wrong turn.” What we did take away was the realest experience of the new Forester possible through gravel dirt, mud, snow, highways, and mountains.
Improvements That Matter
The cost of all Foresters increases by about $2,600 for 2025, but current owners will have no problem figuring out where some of their extra money is spent. As we left the 37,000-plus-acre ranch, the gravel and dirt road leading out seemed quieter than we expected. We drove the range-topping Touring trim, but the entire lineup has improved sound-deadening material in the floor, roof, fenders, and firewall, and it makes a difference that you can hear. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say you can’t hear it. Throughout the day, road impacts on all surfaces were so well damped that we steered toward each new obstacle and imperfection as a chance to test the Subie. Tire and wind noise are still present at highway speeds but kept to a level that won’t make speaking to second-row passengers or listening to a podcast a chore. This kind of quietness makes the extra spend and the $41,390 needed to take home a Forester Touring seem perfectly reasonable.
Better Chassis, Better Ride
Even before we unintentionally forged our own path, our ride was filled with winding gravel and dirt roads. The dull roar of loud tires on the paved roads can be annoying, but rough gravel roads excite the wheels and chassis with high-frequency impacts that will twist a chassis and create squeaks and rattles in the process. Rocks bombarding the inner fenders and floor of any vehicle are not pleasant to listen to and create the sense that something is definitely going to break.
These types of unwanted noises were eliminated by changing how the Forester is built. Subaru planned the unibody assembly around having access to the areas the needed the biggest improvements. The new Forester has more welds and three times more structural adhesive to fill gaps and increase stiffness in areas that can cause squeaks and rattles. The improvements amount to 10 percent better torsional rigidity, Subaru says, making for a drive that’s not only quieter but also more enjoyable because you won’t wince at every pothole.
Not Speedy But Mighty
The updated chassis doesn’t just help with interior sound quality. It improves handling in conjunction with a revised all-wheel-drive system and powertrain. The small rocks covering the rough terrain we conquered in the Forester can be like driving on marbles and often more unpredictable than ice or snow. Subaru’s full-time symmetrical AWD tackled it well, with updated controls to anticipate vehicle weight transfer. By considering steering angle, the system can now proactively adjust torque between front and rear wheels for a smoother and more predictable line through a corner. That stability let us rip through turns with confidence and ease. The Forester might be best known for hauling around pets, kids, and camping gear, but it handles more like a quieter WRX than you would expect.
The engine is the reminder that the Forester is not a WRX of any kind, and it's the one place we wish Subaru had made bigger gains. When we made it to our first highway section, the not-so-peppy 180 hp from last year’s engine left us wanting more—not more performance, just a bit more hustle. Loaded up with two adults and camera gear, the weight of our cargo didn’t amount to more than an afternoon picnic. As the Forester gets heavier, you really start to notice just how few horses are pulling it.
But nothing was left untouched in the new Forester, so here’s the big engine update: Two more lb-ft of torque! OK, that’s not it. The real improvement was shifting the peak torque down from 5,400 to 3,700 rpm. Subaru engineers were apparently surprised to learn what anybody who has driven I-70 west of Denver already knows: Forester owners rarely visit the top half of the tachometer. For Subaru’s clientele, this change should deliver a bigger benefit than more power. Horsepower might get work done quickly, but the torque is what dictates how much work an engine can do. The 3,000-4,000-rpm range is the sweet spot in most conditions, so the muscle needed is never far away. The engine also has new rocker covers, a new upper oil pan, new mounts, and a new starter that all contribute to less perceptible engine noise and vibration.
To make better use of available power and torque, all 2025 models adopt the continuously variable transmission from the 2024 Forester Wilderness, which had a wider ratio spread and eight calibrated ratios to mimic an automatic transmission instead of the seven simulated gears in other versions. Paddle shifters are included in Sport models and above.
Has Subaru kept any surprises in reserve for the 2025 Forester Wilderness? We won’t know until later this year when it is released. The 2024 Wilderness was so popular that it is still in production to meet demand. We’re looking forward to what the revision holds, because with 8.7 inches of ground clearance, the Forester offers more than enough capability for most buyers.
What Goes Up Must Come Down
There is some actual WRX DNA in the Forester in the electric dual-pinion steering rack, which is also found in the Subaru Crosstrek. In the outgoing Forester, the assist motors worked through the steering column, which reduces feel. The new rack-mounted motor reinforced our inputs and contributed to the confident feel of the chassis, AWD, and torque delivery.
This is where getting lost put all the mechanical updates together in a way that we wouldn’t have otherwise experienced. With no other roads in sight, we turned off the highway onto a dirt road that somehow matched our first few landmarks, namely a couple of forks that appeared right where we expected them to. We did realize we weren’t on the right path exactly, but were pretty sure—for a while, at least—that we had left pavement at the right spot. Our last attempt at the correct path led us up a mountain on a narrow dirt road until we found a tree blocking the road. We knew we couldn’t be the first ones to encounter it, but backing down the road wasn’t as appealing as finding a spot to turn around. So we moved the tree and drove on.
All that did was put us farther up a road we had to back down anyway. Craning around to stare out the back, we began a mile-long descent in reverse, giving us an opportunity to fully appreciate the great visibility through the large, upright glass. If we’d had more cargo—possible with more tie-downs and more room between wheel arches—the new rearview camera mirror that’s standard on the Touring models and optional on others would have helped us see behind it. Combined with the 360-degree surround view, we could have made our way down using only the mirror display and the new 11.6-inch center display. The rear camera view has a prominent fish-eye effect that’s distracting in normal driving, but in this situation, it focused our gaze on the narrow road well. The new display is standard on all models except the base model, which gets dual 7.0-inch displays.
As good as these features are, using our own eyes still made the process easier. The improved steering was a lifesaver while staring backward and driving with one hand. We were on an actual road, but larger rocks and sticks popped up frequently enough that we appreciated the Forester making the task easier. The suspension mitigates large body movements nearly as well as an active damping system might. And as we continued down our winding road backward, the variable torque distribution driven by the steering input kept everything stable. We don’t typically review cars based on driving them backward down mountains, but because we had to, it magnified everything that already impressed us with the ride and handling.
Go Anywhere, Do Anything
Hopefully you don’t ever find yourself in the same situation, but we would be lying if we said it wasn’t fun. The Forester helped by leaning into the adventure and ensuring we didn’t have to deal with a fussy, incapable car. Subaru knows its customers lead active lifestyles and travel beyond the pavement occasionally. The Forester delivers the versatility and confidence these drivers need. Not every Forester owner is going to be a driving enthusiast the way a WRX or a BRZ driver might be, but they will appreciate their crossover as a necessary tool in their life and adventures. Keep the ground clearance in check, and you will be hard pressed to find a road the Forester can’t handle with almost anyone behind the wheel.
Cars should look cool and go fast. At least, that was Matthew’s general view of the world growing up in Metro Detroit in the early ’90s, and there was no exception. Raised in the household of a Ford engineer and car enthusiast, NASCAR races monopolized the television every Sunday and asking, “what car is this?” at every car show his dad took him too before he could read taught him that his favorite car was specifically, the 1971 Chevelle SS. (1970 can keep its double headlights, it’s a better look for the rear!) He learned the name of every part of a car by means of a seemingly endless supply of model car kits from his dad’s collection and could never figure out why his parents would drive a Ford Taurus Wagon and F-150 to work every day when a perfectly good 1967 Chevy Impala sat in the garage. Somewhere between professional hockey player, guitar player, journalist, mechanic, and automotive designer, he settled on the University of Northwestern Ohio (UNOH) with the hopes of joining a NASCAR pit crew after high school. While there, learning about electronics and the near-forgotten art of carburetor tuning (give him a call before you ditch your “over complicated” Rochester Qudarajet) were equally appealing, and the thrill of racing stock cars and modifieds weekly on the school’s dirt oval team was second to none at the time. And then sometime late in 2009, Matthew caught wind of the Tesla Roadster on YouTube and everything changed. Before it, electric cars we not cool, and they were not fast. A budding and borderline unhealthy obsession with technology would underpin a 12-year career at Roush Industries that would take him from a powertrain technician for the Roush Mustang, to building rollercoasters, NVH engineering, and finally to a state-of-the-art simulated durability lab working with nearly every EV startup you’ve ever heard of, and some you never will. And then it was time to go, and by a stroke of luck Nikola Tesla himself couldn’t have predicted, MotorTrend’s test team was looking for the exact kind of vehicle testing background he had to offer. And with it, his love of cars, art, engineering, and writing all suddenly had a home together. At this point in life, Matthew has developed a love and appreciation for all cars and methods of propulsion. He loves reviewing minivans as much as luxury cars and everything in-between, because the cars people need to haul their kids around are just as important as the ones we hang on our bedroom walls.
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