Subaru Forester versus softroader rivals
New Subaru Forester takes on the Honda CR-V, Mitsubishi Outlander, Nissan X-Trail and Toyota RAV4 in a compact-4WD comparison test. By JOSHUA DOWLING. If nature-lover, documentary-maker and narrator David Attenborough were to study the huge growth in the popularity of soft-roaders, it might sound something like this:
“Deep in the urban jungle a new species is taking over the landscape. Suburban streets are now crawling with a new type of automobilus maximus: the soft-roader.
“The migration of ordinary folk to this new form of transport is quite a phenomenon. The soft-roader is displacing native vehicles from their natural habitat faster than many people realise it. There was a 20 per cent increase in the population of soft-roaders in Australia last year alone - and the big sedans that have been deserted face extinction.
“The majority of the soft-roader pack are identified by their pristine plumage, shiny paintwork and a distinct lack of any evidence of dirt-road travel.
“If you wait long enough, though, and look carefully enough, you might get to see a very rare beast indeed: a soft-roader with a National Parks sticker on its windscreen. These are widely regarded as the true adventurers of the soft-roader kingdom. Some openly display their place in the hierarchy by ‘forgetting’ to remove expired National Parks labels from previous consecutive years, as badges of honour from camping expeditions into the wilds of the Southern Highlands or, even further afield, to Nowra.”
As we wait eagerly for an Attenborough assessment on soft-roaders, we’ve gathered the five top sellers of the more than 20 models available in the compact class.
The occasion? A new Subaru Forester has gone on sale and we were keen to see how it compares with its likely rivals. All have similar engine outputs and, a sign of how close the competition is, all are priced within $1500 of each other. Here’s how they fare.