Subaru not afraid to tinker with winner in Forester

The redesigned Subaru Forester is bigger, filled with advanced safety features and has a roomier, more luxurious interior than ever before.

Making its world debut last week at the New York auto show, the Forester demonstrates that Subaru Corp. is not afraid to enhance one of its bread-and-butter products.

The Forester, currently the best-selling nameplate for Subaru Canada and second-best seller for Subaru of America, has been crucial to the Japanese brand's sales growth in the North American market since it arrived here in the late 1990s.

The 2019 model redesign mainly focused on its interior and safety equipment. The new version is immediately identifiable as a Forester, given its familiar shape and attributes. But inside are new seats up front, and all Foresters except the base standard trim come with an eight-inch touch-screen infotainment system.

The wheelbase now stands at 2,667 mm (105.1 inches), Subaru says, up from 2,639 mm (103.9 inches), with rear-seat legroom growing by 35.5 mm (1.4 inches). Subaru says the Forester will be more spacious overall, especially when it comes to headroom as well as hip and shoulder room.

The cabin will also be quieter, a result of joining the Subaru Global Platform.

"The interior is really the differentiator for this car," Subaru of America CEO Tom Doll told Automotive News.

The top-of-the-line Touring trim, with a rich shade of brown, is the most visual display of Subaru's new interior. It includes a 10-way power driver's seat, an eight-way power front passenger seat, heated rear seats and a heated steering wheel to round out what the automaker is calling "the most luxurious Forester ever."

DRIVER FOCUS NEW

Subaru also made its EyeSight driver-assist technology standard in the United States — but available as an option in Canada, according to the automaker’s news release — with the redesign and added a new safety feature it calls DriverFocus.

DriverFocus serves as a monitoring system that uses facial recognition software to identify signs of driver fatigue or driver distraction, the automaker said.

The Forester is the first in the segment to offer such a feature. It can recognize up to five drivers and remember their presets for seat position, climate and infotainment.

So how did Subaru approach the redesign of one of its key components in the Forester?

By not being afraid.

"You can never really be afraid to try and take a design that's worked and try to evolve it and modify it in such a way that it's going to continue to attract customers to the brand and keep our customers loyal," Doll said. "If you look at past evolutions of the Forester, it's done that. It's been different enough in each iteration since the 2009 model year. That was the big jump. Since then, we've evolved it to maintain its uniqueness in the market. But sometimes you can't be afraid to evolve it because the market is always evolving."

NO. 1 CONTENDER

After being named Canadian Utility Vehicle of the Year in 2017, Subaru sold 13,798 Foresters in Canada last year, making it the automaker’s most popular vehicle in Canada in 2017.

Meanwhile, Subaru sold 177,563 Foresters in the United States last year. Just 10 years prior, in 2007, it sold 44,530 there.

Doll expects the redesigned model to climb higher and vie for the brand's No. 1 sales spot with the Outback in the United States.

"We would like it to be a 200,000 unit a year vehicle for us [in the United States] once we get it fully launched and out," he said.

While the Forester is one of the oldest nameplates in the brand's lineup, Doll sees more sales potential as people discover it.

"Once people see the Forester and get an understanding of what it's all about, and the safety aspects that we've built into the vehicle," he said, "we think the sky's the limit with this thing."