Yahoo Autos The Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness Lets Your Inner Granola Girl Run Wild
Subaru’s Wilderness range has brought off-road capabilities to its Outback and Forester cars since 2021. Now, the Japanese automaker has given the Crosstrek the same treatment, raising the ride height and adding rugged styling, performance upgrades and all-terrain tires. This means the new Crosstrek Wilderness makes for a pretty fun entry point into the world of heading off piste.
Full disclosure: Subaru flew me to St George, Utah, and put me up in a bougie tent in Zion National Park so that I could spend a day testing the 2024 Crosstrek Wilderness on the trails.
Read more
Trump Lawyer Sports Gamer Laptop At $250 Million Fraud Trial
Your Guide to October’s Much-Anticipated ‘Ring of Fire’ Solar Eclipse
A Deep Fake Tom Hanks Is Promoting a Dental Plan, But the Actor Has 'Nothing to Do With It'
All 182 horses of power live here.
Subaru has also taken steps to raise the ride height, which now gives you 9.3 inches of ground clearance, and modifications have been made to the front and rear bumpers to increase approach, breakover and departure angles – which now sit at 20.0, 21.1 and 33.0 degrees respectively. To aid its off-road performance, Subaru fitted all terrain tires that are wrapped around 17-inch alloy wheels.
To match its dreams of conquering parts unknown, the $33,290 (including destination) Crosstrek Wilderness now comes with an updated exterior that features lots of black plastic cladding to up the rugged aesthetic. The front end has new Wilderness-exclusive fog lights and the grille has been tweaked to feature a criss-cross pattern that Subaru says is a magnified version of the design found on the standard Crosstrek grille. There are also standard roof rails and neat gold accents dotted across the car’s exterior, which rounds out the design nicely – especially in the metallic orange color my review car came in.
Where every good Subaru owner takes their cars: national parks.
What’s It Like Behind The Wheel?
After all these changes, the car is surprisingly familiar on the road. It feels like a Crosstrek thanks to that rumble of the boxer engine and the same light steering that leaves you feeling nicely in control when you sit behind the wheel. In sensible scenarios like around town and on county roads, the Crosstrek Wilderness is a nice place to be. Standard tech like lane keeping and blind spot detection help you feel safe, while throttle response is good and the brakes are sharp.
When you hit the highway and get a chance to open the taps a bit more, the acceleration is fine thanks to the extra power over the base Crosstrek. But as with most cars fitted with a CVT, the feeling you get as it powers up to cruising speed isn’t setting the world alight.
But Subaru has prepped this car for adventures in parts unknown, and it’s off the beaten track that the Crosstrek Wilderness really comes into its own.
Before the dust settles.
Is The Crosstrek Wilderness Ready For Adventure?
Pulling off the highway and onto a sandy trail gave me the chance to test out the X Mode driving features, which come with Subaru’s Wilderness models. This gives you a little control over the way the car handles on rough stuff, with modes like Deep Snow/Mud disengaging the traction control and changing the way the all-wheel-drive system puts the power down.
Speed is limited to 25 mph with X Mode engaged, but the Crosstrek Wilderness feels like it scampers over sand with ease. On a flat trail, I was confident in the car’s traction, no doubt helped by those Yokohama Geolandar all-terrain tires. When the sand got deeper, I didn’t feel the car dig in too much – but caverns left by ATVs are best avoided if you don’t want to risk the Crosstrek’s underside. For peace of mind, there is a metal skid plate at the front end to protect your essentials.
On these trails, the suspension did a good job at keeping the wheels planted over the rough stuff but the ride across ruts and bumps was pretty harsh. You don’t go onto paths like this expecting a buttery-smooth experience, but a little more travel in the suspension might have gone some way in protecting my bony frame from the bumps of the road.
This badge means adventure.
But it isn’t just bumpy dirt tracks that X Mode comes in handy, as Subaru is counting on its nature-loving buyers using their Crosstrek Wildernesses as a means of getting a foot in the door at their local off-road park. To prove the car’s worth on tougher tracks, we headed even further off road and up steep, dusty inclines that put it to the test.
