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If Subaru's Forester is, as the company contends, an alternative to mainstream sport utility vehicles, then what in Hell am I doing racing the new 2003 version around the high banks of Talladega Superspeedway?
Shouldn't I be knee-deep in mud, fording stream, or tackling the Rubicon, giving Subaru the opportunity to prove that its mid-sized crossover vehicle is indeed as butch as a real ute. Certainly, the Forester's raised suspension and Yokohama mud & snow radials would seem to be more at home trampling foliage than hooning through Talladega's 33-- degree banked turns.
But it's part of Subaru's assertion that the Forester's basic design is so fundamentally sound that even taking it out of its natural element fails to upset its comportment.
There is some truth to the company's assertions that Subaru's implementation of all-wheel-drive is superior to the competition's. For one thing, the company's trademark horizontally-- opposed...