We know how this forest-greenForester owner feels, given that we have one just like it. Needless to say, Subaru Foresters are one of the most popular cars in Eugene, and for some reason, the overwhelming majority from 1998 through about 2002 or 2003 are this exact color. One time, we were parking in a lot, and the first available space was between two green Foresters. Three green Foresters in a row; too bad I didn’t have my camera along then (pre-CC). Anyway, Stephanie wants a bumper sticker like this too, saying “Yet Another Green Forester”.
The only reason we bought a green one was because it was a “One At This Price” advertised special. I should have tried to switch for another one at the same price, but I’m a lousy negotiator.
I just saw a green one this morning while on my way to work. They’re really everywhere!
Are they as common as the green Honda Accord sedan from a decade ago?
Or the burgundy Odyssey?
Or the brown-gray Civic, Saturn or Camry?
I find it amusing that Subaru drivers expect to be viewed as contrarians and think of themselves as somehow original and different from the rest of us. Having a popular color on a Subaru probably only affects Subaru owners as irritating or unusual because they see themselves as supremely unsual.
A Subaru is just another car you paid too much money for in order to be different. Silly!
BTW, I should note that this vehicle doesn’t need to be altered much to look like a small 1961 Rambler Cross Country. Same kind of owners driving them too!
I paid $4500 for my Subaru Outback, not to be different or express myself as a contrarian, but because everything else that could haul my dogs and camping gear for that price was an SUV that drove like crap. I’ve had it for 7 years and 100k+ miles with no major issues. Your judgement of people for the car they pick is unwarranted, as well as inaccurate.
Mine’s 10 years old and has 134,000 miles; I expect to put another 3-4 years and 50-60,000 miles on it. We chose it over a Grand Cherokee that I probably wouldn’t still have by now.
I don’t expect to be viewed as a contrarian for driving a Subaru; I may be viewed as a contrarian for keeping a car 10+ years in LA, which seldom happens. It’s just the best car I’ve ever owned and I’m loath to give it up as long as it’s running this well.
I think this is more of a tongue-in-cheek comment on Subaru’s limited color palette for the Forester than anything else. (I thought the original Forester was one of the ugliest wheeled vehicles ever built. Then I saw an Aztek.)
My Outback was the same price as my Camry, and everybody has one of those. How silly.
VD, your sweeping generalizations may be amusing some of the time, but life is not quite as black and white as you try to paint it. Subarus became popular in the North East, Rocky Mt states and the PNW because they offered a way to deal with snow and rough mountain roads without having to buy a Scout or Blazer or such.
People bought them because they filled a gaping hole in the market.
Anyway, people don’t buy certain cars to be different, as the case with all the Subarus here proves. If they buy them for social reasons, they buy them to FIT IN, not to be different. If you want to be different in the parts of the country where Subarus are very popular, you’d buy a new Malibu.
Sweeping generalizations? Me?
“I wanna be DIFFERENT – just like everyone ELSE I know!!”
Not to impugn any particular owner of such a car – but the herd mentality does manifest itself, often and especially in those people who think they’re bucking the herd…
You should research the boxer engine and symmetrical AWD. Then make assumptions.
After a two year hunt, I bought my first Subaru last month. As with any new car, I’m still discovering little things that amuse me. I’m not sure what you define as overpaid, but I assuredly did not.
Question I would have: Why, where snow is rare, would they be so popular?
As far as I know (never having owned one) they’re not off-road cars or particularly capable in that regard. All-wheel-drive is nice to have in some circumstances with rain or black ice…but the additional costs for minimal benefits, minimal needs, suggest against. Are these particularly fine driver’s cars? More useful for the space inside? Or the fashion, not unlike a Jeep CJ was in Los Angeles?
I think a lot of the need (perceived or real) isn’t necessarily snow on the roads, it’s that a lot of people in these places are very “outdoorsy” too. I know when I vacation in Colorado, some hiking trailheads are hard to get to, or up gravel mountain roads, this is where the Subaru’s really shine. They’re not rock crawlers, but they can simply fly over rutted, and washed out gravel roads. I’ve been to places off the beaten bath where there’s nothing but Subaru’s and maybe a 4Runner or another SUV there. I personally love the AWD on my Subaru, even in just the rain on pavement it makes a big difference. Hell, accelerating away from a steep red light in the dry is easier with AWD.
The first time I ever noticed a place with a large percentage of Subaru’s was Vermont. Their popularity there is just as much due to heavy snow as it is that huge numbers of people live off dirt roads that can be a nightmare just in the rain.
All that being said, I’m sure there are plenty of people who buy them just because they’re regionally popular, but the basic practicality of them is what I believe sells most Subaru’s.
These cars hug the pavement beautifully in wet, slippery conditions on the many steep and winding roads in the Pacific Northwest, where it rains much of the year. Also many drivers here regularly encounter snow and ice and chain requirements in the Cascade mountain passes when traveling east/west and north/south making awd a convenience if not a necessity.
They’re popular among outdoor enthusiasts for their capacity to haul gobs of camping, biking, kayaking gear for a good price. It’s a car that also fits the image of the outdoor enthusiast.
My experience with Subaru is that ownership costs are reasonable for an AWD car. The design is very utilitarian. And I’m a huge wagon guy- there aren’t many choices for wagons.
We bought our Subaru as an alternative to bulky crossovers and SUVs for our family outdoor adventures. We regularly get 30mpg or better and it handles crappy secondary roads with ease.
You think snow is rare in the PNW?? Our mountains get more snow than anyplace in the country. 1440 inches (that’s not a typo) on Mt. Baker some years back. We, and many folks here go skiing; Alpine or cross country, or snow shoeing, or camping in the summer down a rough forest road. People move to the PNW in order to have an outdoor lifestyle. Next….
The lack of salt-related corrosion suggests to the outsider that the cars, if not the people, seldom get exposed to it.
I’m pretty sure neither WA nor OR use road salt, or at least its use is VERY limited. Not like here in the midwest where it’s dumped by the truckload at the lightest flurry.
We don’t use salt here. When we drive up to the mountains to go skiing, it’s often all on packed snow above a certain elevation. AWD can be Very useful! Take my word for it. Especially when you’re done skiing, and its been snowing all day, and your car is sitting in a foot of fresh snow.
After reading my Curbside Classics for years, haven’t you noticed the utter lack of rust on all the cars out here?
If you don’t understand the appeal of Subarus, and the way we live out here, that’s ok. But do you always have to be so negative about it? People aren’t all just blind sheep when it comes to car buying.
What, am I negative? I’m puzzled.
I don’t know much about the Pacific Northwest…but I do know a little; I worked out in various parts of Washington State one summer years ago. I know Seattle sees almost no snow, due to its proximity to the ocean breezes. I’d assumed that since cars in your region were corrosion-free, there wasn’t much white stuff.
Now, this is not being negative…but I don’t know how it comes to be. Colorado fought the struggle against salt for YEARS…but with I-70 came truck traffic, and somewhere along the line, the decision was made to apply salt-based melting agents. To allow commercial traffic to move through, presumably. Since then, Denver, other regions, have gotten pretty free with the sodium.
So…if you don’t have that going on, that’s a blessing. I just can’t conceive it.
Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, being a bit tired from working hard on my house and trying to keep this site moving along. But you’ve been here a long time, and I and others here in the PNW have written about our snow, winters, and not using salt here many times. I guess I assume folks remember what they read.
There really is a good reason why Subarus became popular here; folks tend to be very outdoorsy. So with the extra ground clearance and AWD, a Subaru is a very logical choice, right? Mountains are right near by; in an hour, I’m in the deep snow skiing in the winter.
And they’re competitive in other ways. Consumer Reports rates the Impreza as its top pick among all cars in its class, regardless of being AWD.
So it isn’t just about the herd instinct, although undoubtedly that has come to be a factor. But that applies to many cars; including CUVs in general, right? Who needs all those CUVs in 75% of the country. Who needed all those SUVs back when they were the hot thing?
Agree with your point about not needing trucks/SUVs in many regions. The puzzling thing is, the Subaru offers little of the panache that came with tall, hulking SUVs. It’s basically a CAR. We know what the SUV and truck craze was about; urban apartment-dwelling males who wanted to be cowboys; soccer moms who wanted to be Lara Croft. But none of that passed to the AMC Eagle or the spate of AWD cars that followed in the Eagle’s flight.
Which is why I was puzzled. If you do get a fair amount of snow or have a fair number of folks out that way that go to higher elevations on a regular basis…that makes sense. But me, coming as I do from Northeast Ohio and Western New York (Mayville, our county seat there, would get 300 inches of snow in a typical winter) found front-wheel-drive to be fully adequate. Of course, in those years 35 years ago, there was no AWD and 4x4s were prohibitively expensive when compared with $3000 Chevrolets. So it was, literally, tire chains in winter storms until the Rabbit Revolution took hold.
Sorry to have tripped your triggers, there. I can relate, being worn to the nub and then coming onto your website and see some knothead running his mouth… (c;
Last time we had ‘snow’ in Houston I believe a Bush as in office. However when it rains in Houston, it’s torrential at times; the road oils surface for the first 10 minutes and its like driving on ice.
Meanwhile the AWD is competent enough for light trail driving for us bikers, hikers and ranchers.
Gentlemen!
The National Review Online has an article claiming that the UAW is to blame for the end of Packard, and by turn, Detroit.
I’ve been attempting in comments to point out the inaccuracies in the article.
Anyone who has ever read Aaron’s investigative and thoroughly investigated work on Packard’s demise needs to help shoot this amateur online article down.
I’m no UAW fan, but I sure don’t like it when ideologues hijack auto history and then twist it to make a political point!
Well…to get off-topic a bit…in a sense, it was. Not the demise of Packard, per se but the demise of the Studebaker-Packard effort.
It was high unit costs, mostly rooted in labor, that made S-P lose money on still relatively-high sales volume. But this really should carry on in another thread.
@VD
What does this have to do with a green forester??
The funny part is your last line, so that makes it OK for you to hijack this blog?
my mother in law is currently driving her green 99 in dallas commuting happily along after i reworked the head gaskets and seals. by far the best color i think.
I’m up in Portland, I have a dark gray 2008 Forester (last of the wagon bodystyle, woohoo!) and I would love it if they had had it in a forest green or maroon color (especially without the tan interior).
Oddly enough, you could get green in Canada in 07-08. Grey (what else?) interior. My wife had one until we traded it for a CR-V this spring. Great car for BC winter driving. From what I’ve seen in Washington and Idaho there were lots of Subaru colors that were unique to Canada or the US. Not sure why.
I think of the 90s as the decade of dark green and champagne-colored cars. Dark green became one of the few real colors offered on many cars then. I will admit that I liked it then, and still do. My 94 Club Wagon was dark green (with champagne lower body).
Now, it is a color that really dates a car. Chrysler tried bringing it back on minivans within the last 3 or 4 years, but sold very few.
Now that you mention it, the only people I ever knew with a Forester had – ready – a green one just like this.
Even if not an actual Eddie Bauer, any Ford truck, van or SUV looks good in these 90’s colors of dark green, navy blue or maroon, with tan lower two tone. It is now a dated look like you said, (don’t tell the current King Ranch buyers this…) but I still like it. Around that time my dad had tan and brown F-150 that he’d use to tow his boat that was dark green with tan graphics. Very period cool.
FWIW I see just as many Escapes and CRVs around town (in Portland) as Foresters. I think the playing field has just been leveled out here, since there is a readily available amount of Subaru dealers and independent specialists, and plenty on the used market.
Whereas in large amounts of the rest of the country, seeing a Subaru is relatively rare. I know where my mom lives (Fresno, CA) it’s rare to see a Subaru other than hers.
Yup, I had no idea until my aspiring college professor type cousin moved to the northeast and just HAD to get a Subaru. I did my usual “you have kids, get a minivan” schtick but nobody ever listens to that…
Then, when I travelled to NH last summer all was explained, and I found myself thinking “hey, maybe a Subaru wagon with some stickers on the back would be fun instead of this minivan..”
However, the newer Foresters seem kind of generic, sort of like replacing a Jeep XJ Cherokee with the Liberty. Any comment from the Forester faithful?
I probably wouldn’t buy a new Forester for myself, but wouldn’t hesitate to suggest it to somebody with a family or say, my mom to replace her 2005.
I ended up buying a new 2012 Forester. I guess it’s old now that the new model is out. Is it generic? Sure, but who cares? As others have written, it holds all of my camping gear, dog and wife and it ain’t half bad off road. Fuel mileage is comparable to a car vs truck based SUV and it drives like a car. I would say it’s generic in a good kind of way.
Very Very popular cars here half the fun of going skiing from where I live is actually getting to the mountains in winter and only one way out of HawkesBay is flat and not subject to ice in winter, NZ is reputed to have the highest Subaru to population count in the world to counteract some of our shingle back roads and mountainous terrain, the only thing asgainst them is fuel consumption and the need for regular cooling system maintenance or they eat headgaskets. great cars.
Owning a Forester that’s not green or brown would be like owning a Blackwood truck that’s not black or a White Tractor that’s not white. Badum-ching….
My cousin in Seattle has a Forrester and fits the stereotype perfectly right down to the coffee drinking and pot smoking. She didn’t buy it to be different, she bought it because she has dogs. It’s easier for dogs to jump in and out of a Forrester than crossover or SUV.
The car helps her get around on rare days that it snows. There are functional benefits that get underplayed when people talk about these. The 2.5L turbo gives plenty of performance and sounds great but it burns more gas than a V6.
My mom and dad had one of these in burgandy, I didn’t care for it so much (not being Mopar or a domestic for that matter). But I did grow to respect it during the blizzard of 2010 when this and my sister’s Wrangler were the only few cars on the road around Pittsburgh. I didn’t even think of taking my car out during that with the expectation of going anywhere. I hitched with a Subie or a Jeep that week! Also, I can’t deny the fact that it reached over 300,000 miles with just regular maintenance. My 93 Dodge Spirit “only” made it to 275,000 before it breathed it’s last.
Let me tell you, you don’t buy a Subaru in Salt Lake to make a statement. At least 25% of the cars in the parking lot at the gym that I go to every day are Subis, and most are driven by blue-haired ladies. Hard to feel studly in that company.
In the Salt Lake valley we commonly get 6″ overnight snowfalls in the winter. Utah snow generally is light and powdery, but I have a very steep driveway, and many times my wife’s Camry couldn’t handle the climb, nor could my Cadillac STS. Our Subarus have no trouble with the grade.
One of the Commentariat mentioned that AWD is useful on Black Ice. Really? Nothing works on black ice except studded tires which are legal in Utah from Nov to Apr. At the SLC airport you can tell the Park City transporters from the noise they make.
Not bragging, but I can afford just about any car I want, in cash (<$100,000). Yet I drive an Impreza, with leather and auto climate control, which set me back $22,800 out the door. Not only does it handle the snow with ease, but it's a great road car-just wish it were a bit quieter (less road noise) on the road. Not the best gas mileage, but I guess that's the price one pays for all-season performance.
You don't make statements with $23K cars, you make time.
But I agree with another of the Commentariat-why would anyone in Florida, Texas or S California buy a Subaru? Just a bit of overkill.
Kevin – RE Texas, torrential rains and slick roads and light trails and beach duty.
Subarus are pretty popular here in SoCal though I see mostly Outbacks, the vast majority of which are white. I have several friends who have them and they don’t seem to be of one demographic. Most use them for occasional trips up to the mountains, so that would be the one thing they have in common. I’ve never sensed that any of them are trying to be different through the purchase of this car:-)
Yeesh. Aspersions R Us.
I don’t own a Sube, as FWD does just fine for my N England kula. But I would never think to diss the AWD Sube driver. Bean Boots work for some people.
My mother has a Subaru (Legacy Outback) that she’s had for about 5 or 6 years. I recall when we were shopping for it she wanted a Forester, but I steered her towards the Outback. In both cases she wanted the base model. In the Forester (the generation after the pictured one) if you wanted a base model, Subaru literally only offered them in Silver, Charcoal or Black. Base Outback had the same three choices except you could also get a sky-blue color with silver trim. She did not want a “non-color” so ended up with a blue Outback. It was somewhat baffling that on the base model you could not get any kind of a decent selection of colors. I am not talking about what was on the lot, I mean what Subaru offered per the brochure. It’s not like the base models and the upper trim levels aren’t built on the same line at the same time. Also the paints were all metallics as well, unlike in France years ago where if you wanted a small car it was cheaper to buy it is white than in any other solid color, so it’s not a cost reason…
Perhaps green was one of a very limited selection of colors available on the base Forester and thus why they are more common than say the blue or red ones?
Off-topic but just as baffling is the paint on one of our current cars (future COAL so can’t say what it is) wherein it is a shade of white, but NOT the shade depicted in the catalog which is a different shade. Both solid whites (not pearl or anything) and both colors are on some of the identical models/trim levels from the middle of the model year, so not a carryover or early build or anything, Vehicle was only (and still is) ever built in one plant worldwide, so that is not it either. Just a weird thing…
CC effect. Saw a Forester. It was green. I laughed out loud.
It looks like Subaru finally put window frames on their cars’ doors. It always annoyed me that these were omitted before; it seems to create a potential sealing problem.
+1
Did they even COME in any color than forest green? Oh yeah, and dirt brown… ^o^