The arrival of Subaru’s new three-row SUV, the Ascent, has garnered plenty of attention, but the brand has another launch in the works for 2019: a new Forester. We can’t tell much about what the redesigned Forester will look like beyond the shape of its taillights, but we won’t have long to wait to see the whole thing, as the model will be unveiled at the New York auto show at the end of this month.
The Forester is Subaru’s second-most-popular model. Last year, 177,563 were sold, putting it just behind the Outback, with 188,886. The compact-crossover segment in which it competes is white hot right now, making a new Forester an even bigger deal than the addition of the mid-size Ascent.
The Forester first joined the brand’s lineup in 1998. One of the first car-based crossovers, it was immediately successful. The current generation has been around since 2014 and received a modest makeover for 2017, so the appearance of a new version would seem to be a little ahead of schedule.
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The 2019 Forester will share its modular Subaru Global Platform with the other models in the automaker’s lineup; the 2017 Impreza was the first to use the architecture. Standard all-wheel drive, boxer four-cylinder engines, and a CVT automatic transmission all are sure bets; we hope an available m...