2025 Subaru Forester Sport Yearlong Verdict: My Dogs Will Miss It More Than I Will
Our Forester proved to be a rolling pet palace, but its noisy cabin and sleepy powertrain left humans wanting more.
After a little more than a year and 22,584 miles, it’s time to say goodbye to our yearlong review 2025 Subaru Forester Sport. When I first welcomed the Forester to the MotorTrend garage, I joked that this would be my first Subaru. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest and enjoying outdoor activities, it was almost unbelievable that I had never owned one before. But it was my paternal role as “dog dad” that was the driving force behind the decision for me to spend the year testing the Forester. But more on that later.
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Our Forester, a sharp-looking Crystal White Pearl Sport trim, has a starting price of $35,915. We decided to add Option Package 24, the only one available for the Sport, which for $1,700 adds reverse automatic braking, a hands-free power rear liftgate, and a Harman Kardon premium audio system. We also added all-weather floormats, mud flaps, an auto-dimming mirror, and the cargo sidewall protector.
The final list of optional equipment leads back to why I was assigned the Forester for the year. We decked out our Subie with literally every pet accessory that Subaru offers. I’m talking fitted rear seat and center console covers ($250), custom molded rubberized door protectors ($200), pop-in rear window sunshades ($121), a collapsible Thule pet kennel ($200), and an extendable pet ramp ($300). Added up, the options increased the final price of the Forester to $41,295.
While many of the 22,584 miles were spent driving to photoshoots, car testing days, and trips to the office, I did find time to get out of town for a couple of longer road trips. Unfortunately, the long road trips highlighted some of the Forester’s shortcomings. The biggest of these is road noise. For the revised 2025 Forester, Subaru added additional sound deadening as well as additional structural adhesive to increase the overall stiffness by 10 percent versus the previous generation. I had hoped those measures would lead to a pleasant experience on long road trips. Regrettably, that wasn’t the case.
In late September, my wife and I spent three days covering a total of 1,190 miles on a road trip from Los Angeles north to Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park. The Forester’s thin A-pillars, large windows, and sunroof made for great sightseeing in this beautiful part of the country. The rear seat and cargo area provided more than enough room for our luggage and camera gear, and we found the seats to be comfortable, even during long days behind the wheel. Unfortunately, the added sound deadening and stiffer chassis weren’t sufficient to tamp down the road noise, and we ended the trip feeling acoustically accosted.
Outside of interior comforts, our adventure into the Sierra Nevadas gave me a glimpse of another one of the Forester’s positive attributes: efficiency. Now, if you were to look solely at our yearly average of 25.3 mpg (at $0.19 per mile), you might rightly point out that we fell short of the EPA’s combined fuel economy rating of 28 mpg, though that figure also exceeds what we accomplished in our long-term 2023 Mazda CX-50 (21.7 mpg). But it was on this long road trip that I saw the possibility of living up to the Forester’s efficiency potential. This potential was realized later in the year when I drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and back, doing my best to leave my heavy-footed ways behind. Over the course of the day, I drove slightly more than 510 miles and averaged 37.5 mpg, besting the EPA highway rating by 5.5 mpg. That tells me that our subpar yearly average might have more to do with my driving style and around-town use than what the Forester is capable of.
With as many miles as I was racking up, I brought the Forester in for routine maintenance on two occasions. Both visits, which covered oil and filter changes and tire rotations at the 6,000-mile and 12,000-mile marks, were covered under Subaru’s complimentary two-year or 24,000-mile service program. Looking back at former yearlong tests, “free “is a lot cheaper than $176.08, which is what that CX-50 T ended up costing us in maintenance over a year.
When I wasn’t road-tripping, I spent a totally normal (for millennial dog parents) amount of time hauling my furry life companions to various parks, neighborhoods, and dog sitters. Fully equipped with the Subaru pet accessories, the Forester was a rolling pet palace. While not as destructive as children, a dog can wreak havoc on an unprotected car interior. The custom rear seat cover and molded door protectors were really the stars of the show. The seat protector fit snugly enough to not shift around and even had a separate piece allowing for normal use of the center armrest. Not only did the cover protect the seat material from dog nails, but it also made for an easy-to-clean surface to vacuum off copious amounts of dog hair.
The molded rubberized door protectors locked into the window channel securely and never once fell out. Like the seat cover, the door covers provided scratch protection from dog nails as they poked their heads out of the windows, as well as an easy-to-clean surface for errant drool and dog hair. Between the pet accessories, the low “hop-in height,” and ample second-row shoulder space, the Forester was easily the most dog-friendly vehicle I have lived with over the years. It will also be the thing I miss most as my life becomes “deforested.”
What I won’t miss is the Forester’s underwhelming powertrain. I tried, unsuccessfully, to not continually call out the Forester’s lackluster 180-hp 2.5-liter flat-four engine. A Subaru Forester doesn’t need to be a performance vehicle, but it does need to be able to merge onto the freeway or scamper across a wide boulevard during a break in traffic without having to flat-foot the accelerator. I had the opportunity to drive our Forester back to back with a Forester Sport Hybrid when it was released, and it only reaffirmed my dislike for the base powertrain. The hybrid’s electric motors add just enough low-end oomph to smooth out the Forester’s powertrain and make it feel up to the task. Looking at the numbers, the hybrid powertrain doesn’t make a massive difference in performance, but the driving experience is improved to the point that I suggest anyone in the market for a Forester only consider the hybrid version.
I started my year behind the wheel with a question: Once I go Subaru, do I go back? Did my year with the Forester awaken my inner Gore-Tex-clad Pacific Northwesterner? No. At least not this Subaru. The 2025 Forester Sport is almost perfect. The new exterior styling is clean and handsome. The interior, while not new to the Subaru family and dated-looking at this point, is comfortable. The Forester, with its standard 8.7 inches of ground clearance, is still the leader in the segment as far as rough-road capability. Unfortunately, I feel like it’s being held back by its lethargic powertrain and inadequate sound deadening. My two dogs will be sad to see the Forester leave. I wish I could say the same.
More on Our Long-Term 2025 Subaru Forester Sport:
- Once I Go Subaru, Do I Go Back?
- What Does a Dog Think?
- A Look Behind The Lens
- Having fun with Subaru Badges of Ownership
- Should We Have Gotten The Hybrid?
- Why Out Forester Is(and Isn’t) a Good Road-Trip SUV
- Just How Far Can Our Subaru Forester Go on a Tank?
- We Love Our Subaru Forester’s Pet Accessories
- These Are Its Biggest Pros and Cons
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Like many of my coworkers, my love for cars was cemented at a young age, thanks in part to Hot Wheels, car magazines, and every car poster I could afford when the book fair set up shop in my elementary school library. While most kids went straight for Where’s Waldo? and Goosebumps, I was torn between the poster of the Lamborghini Countach and the ’32 Ford hot rod with airbrushed flames on the cowling. In high school, I worked at Bergstrom's Antique Autos, a historic garage in Port Townsend, Washington. Surrounded by nearly a century of automotive history, I immersed myself in cleaning, sorting, and selling car parts and memorabilia. I also spent countless hours flipping through vintage car magazines and can comfortably say that I've looked through every Motor Trend, Car & Driver, Hot Rod, and Sports Car Graphic up until the early 1980s. Around the same time, I picked up photography—naturally, with cars as my main subject. Despite my high school photography teacher's advice to branch out, I stuck to my passion and attended every car show I could find. This led me to the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California, where I earned a bachelor’s degree with a focus on automotive photography. I began my career at Motor Trend as a photography intern. After freelancing for a few years, I joined the Motor Trend team full-time in late 2010. My passion for cars and photography continues to fuel my work, and I hope it shines through in every shot.
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