Yahoo Autos The 2024 Subaru Crosstrek Is About the Destination, Not the Journey
What makes a human being? From a psychological standpoint, you could argue it’s the way we strive for more — doing more, seeing more, being more than we were the day before. From an evolutionary standpoint, you might say it’s something much simpler: Tool use. After all, no other species on Earth designs, builds, and uses tools quite the way we do. With the 2024 Crosstrek, Subaru wants to split the difference. The company looked out at its customers and saw people who wanted more — more camping trips, more hiking, more outdoors adventures. To help them get there, the company turned to the other side of humanity, and built a damned fine tool.
Full Disclosure: Subaru shipped me out to Palm Springs to drive the new Crosstrek, where they paid for my room, board, transit, and Joshua Tree park access.
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What’s New About The 2024 Subaru Crosstrek?
This new year brings a whole new generation for the Crosstrek, and that comes with a whole host of changes. The broad strokes are the same: A wagon built on the Subaru Global Platform, powered by a 2.0- or 2.5-liter flat-four that drives all four wheels through a CVT. But look closer, and you’ll see that Subaru changed plenty.
Subaru stiffened the chassis of the new car with additional sealant and swapped steel fenders out for weight-saving aluminum. The steering rack is now borrowed from the WRX, and the CVT has been modified to reduce noise as it winds up. New engine mounts reduce vibrations from the flat-four, and updated EyeSight cameras give the system a wider field of view — and the ability to swerve the car within its lane to dodge obstacles.
What Are the Specs?
The new Crosstrek shares the outgoing car’s engine options, with buyers getting the choice between a 2.0-liter flat-four making 152 horsepower and 145 lb-ft of torque, or a 2.5-liter making 182 hp and 178 lb-ft. The 2.5-liter cars will be introduced later this year, so my tester had the smaller, slower engine. That Premium-trim 2.0-liter car weighs in at a Subaru-estimated 3,296 pounds — heavier than the Base, but slightly lighter than the 2.5-liter Sport and Limited. That power and weight, plus Subaru’s all-wheel-drive, all adds up to 27 mpg city, 34 highway for the 2.0-liter, or 26/33 for the bigger engine.
The Crosstrek keeps the 8.7-inch ground clearance of its prior generation, and has approach and departure angles of 18 degrees and 30.1 degrees, respectively. Those numbers may not sound like much in a world of Wranglers and Broncos, but it’s probably enough to get you where you need to go — provided it isn’t on the other side of a rock crawl.
How Does It Look?
Better in person than it did in Subaru’s original press photos. The nose still feels snubbed, too tall for its length, and the plastic-clad cheekbones still stand out (in a bad way) against the painted bumper. But the headlights and taillights, minuscule in the press shots, are integrated well into the real-life sheet metal — they look good.
The plastic cladding around the Crosstrek’s fenders is larger than on the previous generation, but it fits the character of this car better than it does on the WRX. Plus, the cladding hides functional vents that allow air to escape the wheelwells — Subaru claims this aids highway stability, though you’d likely have to drive the car back-to-back with its prior generation to really notice the difference.
