2002 Subaru Forester

One of the "trendy" phrases for the "Sport Utility Vehicle," or "SUV," has been the "Sport-Ute."

Some reviews have started calling the smaller "sport-utes" "sport-cutes," implying that they're somehow not quite as "good" as larger vehicles.

In cases like the RAV4 or the Kia Sportage, I can understand this tendency toward denigration, but not for the Forester.

It's just not as "cute" as the others - as far as I'm concerned, the Forester is perfect for a couple of DINKs (double income, no kids) and their dogs, unlike my mental picture of the RAV4 being driven by a college-going student who's looking for a more "fun" vehicle.

The 2002 Forester has some changes from previous versions - the front cupholders have been moved upward a bit to avoid interfering with some of the dash controls, and the shoulder space in the back seat has been widened.

Unfortunately, the legroom in the back is still pretty small - OK for kids, not so good for a 5'11" man.

The 2.5 liter horizontally-opposed flat 4 supposedly develops 165 HP. I can believe this - I've overaccelerated the Forester on a couple of occasions, but I'm getting used to the fact that it is *far* more sensitive and *far* more powerful than my old car - a 1955 Chevy four-door with a 235 in-line 6, three-speed on the steering column.

Another advantage to the Forester over the Chevy is the mileage. I'm lucky to get better than 14 miles to the gallon in the Chevy, while the Forester gets 23/28 city/highway.

The Forester now comes standard with power windows, power locks, and a "windowshade" cover for the back cargo area. The air conditioning system can make the interior of the vehicle *uncomfortably* cold in less than twenty minutes, and I'm in Phoenix, Arizona...

The driver's seat is comfortable for a 5'11" tall, 230 pound man who wears a 46 regular jacket. Any wider in the shoulder, though, and it would get uncomfortable. The driver's seat has multiple adjustments that allow you to raise or lower the front edge of the seat or the rear edge of the seat. The net effect is to give you a way to adjust both the seat height and the seat angle. There's a lumbar support adjustment for the driver as well.

The passengers? Well, they get some adjustments - the front passenger can move the seat backward or forward, and adjust the seat back angle, but that's about it. The rear bench has no adjustments at all, unless the people sitting there don't mind their knees being jammed into their faces by trying to sit there with the seat folded down...

The back seat folds down in a 60/40 split, and has shoulder belts for all three back seat positions. The middle shoulder belt is fed from a headliner-mounted retractor, feeding through a loop on the bench and down to a regular seat-belt fastener. There are three child-seat tethers in the roof over the cargo compartment. I have no idea how well they anchor a child seat - we use them as leash tie-down (or up, since they're in the roof!) points for the mutts.

The spare tire is kept below the cargo bed in a below-deck compartment. This is a full-size spare... no undersized pony tires or rubber doughnuts. Other under-deck compartments hold the jack, a lug wrench, and a Torx (star) driver to adjust the roof rack bars. I've also placed my "cargo net" in one of those compartments, since it would otherwise "walk away" if I left it on the roof rack. I plan on adding some jumper cables, flares, first aid kit, and a good flashlight. They'll all fit, especially since I won't be using the spare tire bin to hold drinks and ice as is recommended - a plastic bin that fits inside the spare tire is insulated for this purpose!

I opted to get the towing hitch assembly as one of the options. This gives me a Class I hitch receiver (no hitch ball - need to get one of those from Sears, U-Haul, or any other auto supply house that carries towing supplies) with 2000 pounds of towing capacity with 250 pounds of tongue weight. Not bad for a "sport-cute," especially when you compare the towing capacities of other vehicles in the "sport-cute" class like the RAV4 or the Kia Sportage.

The Forester handles a lot more like my fiancee's Eagle Summit than like my brother's S-10 truck. It corners incredibly well, thanks to its low center of gravity. Acceleration is zippy, too, but not overly so.

Four-wheel drive and four-wheel ABS brakes give me a better feeling about driving on ice (going skiing this winter!) as well as on the Arizona highways with their oil slicks.

The five-speed manual transmission feels crisp, and it's easy to tell when you're actually "in-gear" as opposed to "just out of the notch in neutral."

A mere three days after I drove the Forester off of the lot, we went to Tucson to catch the Old Blind Dogs concert. On our way to Tucson, we ran into one of the classic Arizona thunderstorms, and were forced to pull off the road for about fifteen minutes while visibility was less than 10 feet.

Power lines fell about fifty feet from us, and water was running about nine inches deep along the edge of the road, with bits of ice and hail floating in the mess.

According to the in-dash temperature gauge, the outside temperature dropped from over 95 degrees Fahrenheit to less than 65 degrees in about ten minutes.

We watched a RAV4 go off the road in front of us, missing our front bumper by no more than a few feet (we saw their rear bumper, but couldn't see their front tires - it was that bad.) My guess from watching their slide is that they only had two-wheel drive as opposed to my Forester's AWD. Of course, they were also stupid enough to continue trying to drive despite the completely abysmal visibility. I don't care how good your traction is - if you can't see where you're going, it doesn't matter!

Grape-sized hail put a foot-long crack in the front windshield, but no metal or paint damage was to be seen anywhere else. I'm glad my State Farm coverage has zero deductible for glass replacement.

I was looking for a vehicle that would carry me, my fiancee, our dogs, and our luggage/camping gear. The Subaru Forester does all of this, gets good mileage to boot, and I now have a car that has air conditioning, as my old Chevy didn't...

(Yes, I'm aware that one of the selections for this review says "2001." That's because Epinions has a category for 2002 Forester, but hasn't updated the pull-down menu to allow you to select "2002" as the model year for the vehicle!)