Open the door to the Forester’s cabin and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d opened the door to the late 1990s.
The dashboard is lifted straight from the Impreza, which means a fairly uninspiring design, and hard – though durable-feeling – plastics. That said, the interior of the Forester is effective in a workmanlike way. The seat fabric feels hard wearing, there’s acres of space (especially rear legroom), and the front seats are extremely comfortable and supportive without being in any way ostentatious.
There are also neat, thoughtful touches such as the way the rear seat backs drop down as soon as you pull the release catch. It’s a small touch, but indicative of a generally simple, intelligently designed interior.
A showroom price tag of £17,995 for this 2.0X model compares relatively well against its competitors. The base Forester offers decent standard equipment, too. It doesn’t include items like alloy wheels, leather seats or fancy sat-nav, but useful items
such as automatic air conditioning, heated door mirrors, self-levelling suspension and cruise control are all standard equipment.
Running costs are less favourable. A CO2 output of 198g/km puts the Forester in the second-highest VED band, meaning a year’s road tax will cost you £210 (a diesel Kuga or CR-V will set you back only £170). The favourable weighting of petrol cars puts the Forester on a more even footing with its diesel-powered rivals for company car users, but that still doesn’t make it cheap.
Economy is another area that suffers. Stroke the Forester along a motorway and you might return just north of 30mpg (despite there being no sixth gear), but on a more mixed touring route we managed only 28.8mpg. In town, expect that figure to drop into the low 20s; overall, we achieved a rather poor 23.8mpg.
