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The Subaru Forester is headed for the first facelift of its latest generation. New spy photos of a lightly camouflaged Forester tell us that we should expect some light updates for Subaru's hot-selling crossover.

One item not totally covered in these photos is the grille. Instead of the horizontal slats we get on the current Forester, this one has a honeycomb design that gives us flashes of Audi Sport. It'd be a departure from the friendly and boring face the Forester is stuck with currently, and while there's nothing sporty about how it drives, the look would inject some attitude into the front end. The camouflage covers the whole front of the car, so we expect the Forester will likely get a new front bumper and a revised foglight cutout design in the corners. We can make out what look to be non-production foglights in the inserts — those will be replaced with production units as Subaru gets closer to setting this update loose.

Our long-term 2019 Subaru Forester Touring's interior is one area we wanted to really hone in on over a number of months with it. Though Subaru's interior functionality and space have long been key reasons people choose the brand, interior design and quality have been reasons they've looked elsewhere. A compromise needed to be made.

Subaru is trying to lift itself out of this rut with the higher trims of its latest models. The upmarket interiors of the Outback and Legacy are swathed in decent-feeling leather (or leather-substitute), contrast stitching, attractive trim and piano black accents. However, Subaru's best seller, the Forester, is a mixed bag of new, premium Subaru and old, sensible-shoes Subaru.

Subaru has finally put a turbocharged flat-four under the hood of the fifth-generation Forester. Called Sport, the model is exclusively available in its home country of Japan — for the time being, at least.

Power for the Sport model comes from a 1.8-liter flat-four that's turbocharged and direct-injected to deliver 175 horsepower from 5,200 to 5,600 rpm and 221 pound-feet of torque between 1,600 and 3,600 rpm. Also found in the Levorg station wagon, it's no match for the last-generation XT engine, whose horsepower and torque outputs checked in at 250 and 258, respectively. Compared to the naturally-aspirated 2.5-liter the Forester is currently offered with, however, it offers about the same amount of horsepower and 44 additional pound-feet of torque. It should make Subaru's hot-selling crossover markedly peppier in a variety of driving conditions.

Finding a low-mileage Subaru Forester from the early to mid-2000s is like finding a needle in a haystack, but we did manage to find a 2003 Forester that’s currently up for sale on eBay.

Our 2019 Subaru Forester long-term test car has been a pack rat for many of us on staff at Autoblog. We've stuffed in camping gear, tires, landscaping supplies and much more over a number of months. However, we haven't given it a proper luggage test until now.

West Coast Editor James Riswick has tested a number of compact crossovers that the Forester competes against with his own set of luggage: Ford Escape, Mazda CX-5, Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4. But since our long-term Forester lives in Michigan, we'll be using the same set of luggage that we've used for all other midwest luggage tests.

Information for the 2021 Subaru Forester is out, and the crossover hasn't changed a whole lot for the new year. This will be the third year of this generation of Forester, and it's also the third year in a row without a turbocharged engine option in the lineup. Subaru dropped the more powerful Forester turbo with the redesigned car in 2019, leaving a naturally aspirated 2.5-liter flat-four as the only engine option. It makes the same 182 horsepower and 177 pound-feet of torque this year.

There are a couple notable differences from year-to-year. The responsive (turning) headlights and automatic brights previously reserved for the top trims are now standard equipment. Subaru has added a rear seat reminder system as standard — all passengers will also be reminded to buckle up before the journey with visible and audible reminders, even those in the back seat. Finally, the base price creeps up by $300 to $25,845.

Quick note about our winter wheels and tires: The old STI wheels are so cool – we love gold – we had to put them on our long-term Forester for a bit. We had them lying around from when we had our long-term WRX a few years back, and while I think they look better on the WRX, they don't look too bad on the Forester. The tires are a bit smaller than what I would buy for a Forester if I were looking for new ones, the recommended size is 225/60-17 and these tires are 215/55-17 – about 5% smaller in both diameter and width. 5% may not sound like a lot, but it is. With less sidewall they'll do less to mitigate big bumps, of which there are many on these Michigan roads, but any winter tire is going to outperform an all-season in the Snow Belt. There's no replacement for traction when the going gets icy. It doesn't matter if you're running the stock size if you're in a ditch.

All right, with that, let's move onto the review of our long term 2019 Subaru Forester Touring. ...

In this week's Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzweniewski and Senior Editor, Green, John Beltz Snyder. This week, they're driving a Jeep Gladiator Mojave, Acura MDX A-Spec, our long-term Subaru Forester and a Honda CR-V Hybrid. A little stir-crazy from quarantine, they also derail the conversation for a little bit to talk about beer before launching into this episode's "Spend My Money" segment.

When I got our long-term Subaru Forester back from the shop to fix a mysterious source of moisture, I also happened to have a Honda CR-V Hybrid taking up temporary residence in my driveway. After testing out my large son's car seat in each to these two right-sized vehicles, I moved on to the examine their capacity for the second-most-precious cargo they could carry: beverages. 

I counted eight cupholders in each of these cars, which amounts to two per outboard passenger. Two front cupholders on the center console, one in each front door, one in each rear door, and two in the center armrest that folds down in each rear row. That's not Subaru Ascent levels of beverage storage (19 cupholders!), but it should be plenty to keep a family hydrated on a short-to-medium drive. Though these two appear to be equal in quantity, let's take a closer look and see if they're equal in quality, too. I brought along a Klean Kanteen bottle that's about the same size as most other brand of metal water bottles folks carry around, a big Corkcicle 24-ounce insulated tumbler, a standard 12-ounce soda can, and a skinny, 7.5-ounce soda can that's the same width as a lot of canned energy drinks. As a bonus, I — the man known to Twitter as "that one dude with the Nalgene bottle" — brought my trusty 32-ounce Nalgene to see if it fits anywhere.

I hadn't been doing much driving, so the Forester had spent a good chunk of the rainy/snowy spring week relaxing in my driveway. Finally, it came time to pick up a birthday dinner — Indian food, curbside to-go. As soon as I sat down, I noticed something new: a small crack in the windshield. That fix will have to wait until more businesses reopen. As I eased out of my driveway, another issue emerged. I heard what sounded like water sloshing. Braking for the stop sign at the end of my street … yep, definitely liquid. It sounded like it was below or in front of me.

Later, I was parked in the alley behind the restaurant waiting for my order, and I accidentally dropped my phone down into the black hole on the righthand side of my seat. I reached down and groped for it, but instead of a rectangular personal computer, my fingers found nothing but carpet, seemingly soaked to capacity. My first instinct was to use a disinfectant wipe on my wet digits, but then I got out to inspect the underside of my seat from the second row. There was my phone, sitting in a fabric swamp under the seat.

Subaru's DriverFocus system in our 2019 Subaru Forester long-term tester serves multiple purposes, but its facial recognition abilities are especially intriguing. If your face is registered in the car's system, the infrared camera will recognize you and adjust your seat and mirrors to the position initially chosen during the setup process. It'll store up to five faces, automatically adjusting everything to the person's face it sees.

The camera can recognize you in the dark or with glasses on, according to Subaru. It looks for the points on a person's face, but doesn't remember a specific person. This gave us an idea for a test. Can we trick it by using a photo of somebody else's face? Check out the video above to see what happened.

Even though these types of ads aren’t as aggressive as say, Chevy’s “Real People, Not Actors” spots, name-dropping your competition can make you look a bit “thirsty”, which is unbecoming of an already strong-selling nameplate like the Honda CR-V.

Our 2019 Subaru Forester long-term tester is rounding second base in its stay at Autoblog's Michigan HQ, yet the blue-painted, gold-wheeled crossover hadn't left the Midwest throughout its first six months here, so I sought to change that by taking it down to New Orleans. The goal: Determine if the Forester is a good road trip car. Of course, my girlfriend and I also wanted to go to Mardi Gras, but either way, we were in for some long days of driving.

There are a few umbrella categories a vehicle should excel in to make a vacation and road trip better for all involved. For me, those include comfort, utility and its driver assistance systems.

Our long-term 2019 Subaru Forester has been a real workhorse in our fleet from the time we took delivery late last year. We've managed to rack up over 12,000 miles in the first five months — it's been east and west of Michigan so far, but nowhere further than a day's drive away. We'll take it on a longer road trip soon. Since Subaru calls for 6,000-mile service intervals, our local Subaru dealer just finished up the second service call on the crossover.

Both services have housed mini-events on top of the scheduled work. Subaru changed the oil, replaced the oil filter, rotated the tires and performed a multi-point inspection on both occasions. However, the first service also involved a windshield replacement. Days before our appointment with Subaru, one editor met with a rather large stone that was kicked up on the highway. This caused a large chip in the windshield that quickly developed into a crack meandering across the passenger side of the glass. After the new glass was installed, the Subaru techs had to recalibrate its Eyesight technology so the adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping tech would work correctly. It wasn't cheap — Subaru charges $250 for an Eyesight calibration after a new windshield is put in.