2014 Subaru Forester: Everything you wanted to know about the car and the new X-Mode AWD - YouTube

I just "love" the sound the hood made on closing :^)

Why do so many moms buy such a huge 4WD sort-of-off-road vehicle simply to do the school run and shopping??

Why are so many people who buy these huge 4WD sort-of-off-road vehicles so unable to park them??

;-)

Huge? What do you Lilliputians drive?

I've got a sports car which is very low, so these 4WD things do tower over my car at almost twice the height. :-)

I know someone who used to own a little MG-F sports car. One day it was down at the service centre for it's regular "health check" and one of the employees there backed a Land Rover over the front of it because they didn't see it. :-\

e:

See? little things are scheduled for extintion with the mastadonts to rule the land :^)

With X-Mode fartster is a certified mommobile in the US of A now. Though with dilapidating city utilities (as it pertains to snow and ice removal from the streets) I'm sure I'll see a few xmodes perched on top of fresh snow piles where I live. Quite a few moms sucked their way up to $45k+ wanted by FHI you see.

Yeah, a Forester is hardly "huge"!!

In fact, I noticed long ago that I have to be more careful navigating my Porsche 944 to the back part of the carport than I do my Legacy wagon. Sure enough, I just checked the specs, and the 944 is 2" wider than the Subie. And only 3" lower. The Subie is really only noticeably larger on length (10" more than the Porsche).

Something that's nearly the same size as a 944 can't be called "huge."

Patty

I wouldn't put the Legacy in the same category as the Forrester.

Besides, of course you're going to be more careful with a Porsche than a Subaru - the Porsche would cost ten times as much to fix. :-)

Ahh, evolution proves you wrong. The smallest are usually the ones to survive. Mammals started off as small animals, and grew larger and more varied once the dinosaurs become extinct. :-)

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The Forrester is only 2" longer and 4" wider than my Legacy. It is

12" higher, but I still don't think that makes it "huge." It's nothing like a minivan or an SUV.

Patty

I like to hunt and when I'm out on public land my Forester is dwarfed by the other hunters vehicles. I'd like something bigger but I get by even a couple of times having to cart 2 deer home inside the Forester and I sure do like the 30 mpg I can get on the highway.

One of my kids bought a Hummer and when I asked him what kind of mileage he was getting he said he did not know but he could see the gas gauge drop while he was driving it.

My old 93 Dakota v6 got 12 mpg around town. I don't do that commute anymore but my avalanche does 13 back and forth, up and down, around here. The avalanche does a lot better considering size.

Found my outback gets better milage since I filled up the tires. They were all down to around 20 pounds.

Greg

I think you missed the point ... never mind, it's not worth explaining it.

Newer Subaru's have pressure gauges in each tire. Warning light comes on if pressure goes below about 27 pounds. PITA though as wife had one tire valve go bad in her 2008 Forester and it cost about $200 to replace at dealer.

Past fall when my 2003 Forester was in repair shop for repair of damage from hitting a deer, I rented a Camary which had these pressure gauges that gave pressure for each tire. One went low and I had to add air and gauges gave pressure readings from 30 to 40 lbs. I did not care as it was a rental.

I got the pressure valves in avalanche. Seems mandatory in aluminum leaking rims. Been using can of switch safe anti leak.

Greg

They grew larger. Around where I live you can really tell men have not been slaughtering each other for quite a while cause the average male size and height have grown noticeable in the last 20 years or so.

In the absence of war females tend to favor larger (and taller) mates. And the FHI rolls in and makes it easy for them to ride with their hats on.

Just ask patty.

Curious if the conventional $2 valve was not available or you were dead set on TPMS working in all corners

Wife's Forester and she wanted it fixed. Good idea to replace with conventional valve but I wonder if this would have shut off the dash board light. Me, I might have put a piece of tape over it. Valve was holding air but sending out low pressure signal or whatever triggered low pressure light.

The Camary had readout on each tire but I could not figure which and had to check all of them to find which to inflate more.

It's not really anything to do with war or fighting. Humans have slowly been getting bigger (even ignoring the supposed "obesity epidemic") as they have evolved. The earliest "human" was quite small and even the average human in ancient times was smaller than today.

It's likely that the growth in size ofhumans is partly due to the fact that they no longer have to hide from predators, but many animal species get bigger during their evolutionary existence (some do of course get smaller too, most insects for example).

Actually, I've heard the exact opposite, that humans are getting shorter on average vs. our ancient ancestors. If you go back to pre-h*mo sapien days, African ancestors were over 6 ft on average, which was apparently an advantage in seeing over tall grasslands. But Neanderthal ancestors were around 5 and 1/2 ft on average, thought to be advantageous in preserving body heat in ice-age environments.

Also during the medieval times, with malnutrition and disease rampant inside superdense cities of that time, average human heights fell by 5 inches. So there seems to be a fluctuation in heights over the eras.

Yousuf Khan