Subaru Forester VS Jeep Wrangler

Like much of the Forester STI, the driving experience is heavily borrowed from some tried and true Subaru characteristics.

That naturally aspirated flat-four engine, though underwhelming on paper, gets the job done without much fuss. In fact, it sometimes feels peppier than it should given its outputs.

Its 'S/I' (Sport or Intelligent) drive mode selector is there to adjust acceleration style, but it doesn’t make an enormous difference.

Yes, it could do with more torque, but the engine doesn’t struggle and only starts to sound laboured at high revs during the kind of acceleration you’d need for seconds at a time.

The sound of a CVT whirring away isn’t exactly auditory bliss, nor does it make for engaging acceleration.

But it’s relatively quiet under regular load below highway speed and, as long as the road isn’t too coarse, NVH is generally good in the Forester.

Road, wind and engine noise are certainly present in certain circumstances, but they’re not intrusive until you get to higher speeds.

At those high speeds is where you might notice one of the most significant changes to the STI version of the Forester - the dampers have been retuned by STI, for what Subaru hopes is a “sharper, more responsive driving experience”.

It’s hard to seriously call the Forester sharp - it’s a mid-size family SUV with enough clearance to go light off-roading - but the STI Sport holds up well for what it is.

The Forester driving experience was already likeable and easy, and in terms of cornering and handling bumpy rural (or even just bumpy urban) roads, the suspension keeps things under control without feeling too stiff.

Its body doesn’t roll as much as you might expect when cornering, but given STI’s engineers focused their efforts on the dampers, its a good thing the Forester doesn’t either waft or thud when presented with big sharp bumps, nor does it vibrate and rattle over constant rough surfaces.

Of course, it’s also got 'X Mode' controls for different surfaces like snow, dirt and mud, making it a pretty handy companion for outdoor adventuring or camping trips in regions where the weather gets a bit unpredictable. If you’ve ever tried to get a front-wheel drive hatchback out of a muddy hillside campsite…

Essentially, the Forester is the kind of SUV that, if you wanted to, you could have a medium amount of fun with on a twisty road before taking it down a particularly rough, unsealed or muddy trail, then later hand the keys to your grandma knowing she’d be able to handle everything about the driving experience, too.

The two-door Rubicon is rather ordinary to drive on sealed surfaces, but it isn’t anywhere near as diabolical as some people would have you believe.

This is a purpose-built off-roader with a wide wheel track and low centre of gravity, so it feels solid on bitumen and dirt in equal measure.

However, you do have to drive it with full focus and give yourself time to get used to some if its more quirky aspects if you aren’t already familiar with them. There is plenty of play in the steering, lots of on-road floatiness and body roll, and this Rubicon – tipping the scales at 1977kg tare weight (listed) and measuring 4334mm long (with a 2459mm wheelbase), 1894mm wide and 1879mm high – can be an unpredictable unit.

You need to micro-manage this shorty 4WD at all times. It’s like driving a go-kart, but more fun and – bonus – it’s street legal.

If you’re steering it, this short-wheelbase Rubicon demands your constant attention – but that’s a fun characteristic I appreciate and that it shares with only a few other vehicles such as the Suzuki Jimny and Toyota LandCruiser 70 Series.

However, as fun as it is, this kind of fully engaged driving experience – requiring laser-focus concentration to keep a vehicle on target – asks a lot of the driver and does become tiring (nay, exhausting) after long stints on the road or off of it.

Beyond that though, this Rubicon, with a track-tight turning circle of 10m, is a nicely manoeuvrable vehicle around town (for swift turnarounds and easy parking) in the suburbs and even along overgrown bush tracks – but more about that soon.

Wrangler fans who have bemoaned the loss of the Pentastar V6 needn’t have worried. The new four-cylinder engine delivers a gutsy punch of acceleration when needed and is nicely matched to the eight-speed auto. It’s also smoother, more refined and less noisy than before.

The solid-axle Rubicon has a suspension set-up – including coil springs at every corner – that soaks up most bumps in the road, and that makes for impressive levels of driver and passenger comfort.

This little purpose-built rock-crawler is solidly built and it can get noisy when you’re inside of it as it rumbles along a road or track – no surprise because it does have a boxy body, big wing mirrors and chunky mud-terrain tyres. Part of the experience, part of the fun, I reckon.

So, how does it go off-road? Bloody well, as usual.

The Rubicon is a genuine 4WD with a dual-range transfer case, a ladder chassis, solid axles, well-established 4WD heritage and its boosted by driver-assist tech. It’s immediately more at home taking on low-speed 4WDing than it is negotiating suburban traffic, shopping centre car parks or city streets.

I’ve driven Rubicons in pretty much every kind of challenging off-road situation – sand, steep rain-slick rocky hills, deep mud holes, swollen water crossings – and they’ve never disappointed. 

These Jeeps are some of the few modern-day 4WDs engineered with an off-road focus that offers few concessions to anything other than dirt-track fun – the only vehicles in the same realm are the aforementioned Jimny, 70 Series, and even the likes of the Ford Ranger Raptor and Ineos Grenadier.

Steering in the chopped Rubicon retains a nice weight and feel to it during 4WDing, staying precise as needed, offering the driver a great sense of sustained control through even severe terrain.

Its planted stance gives the Rubicon a distinct composure and its suspension – with a coil spring at each corner – helped it to take the sting out of every dirt-road corrugation on the way to my unofficial 4WD testing and proving ground.

As mentioned earlier, anyone worried about the V6 being dropped should calm down. The new engine is a lively and punchy unit – even livelier than the V6 – and offers up ample smoothly-delivered torque across a wide spread of revs, ideal for high- and low-range 4WDing.

When you switch to 4L and drop the revs, it’s easy to squeeze the most out of this new engine. Considered driving is necessary as is slow and steady throttle, but that's easily achieved in this Rubicon and it was never overworked even when the terrain became very challenging.

This Jeep has a well-calibrated off-road traction control system but if you need even more terrain-grabbing magic, it has front and rear diff locks, and a front sway-bar disconnect system, which helps to unlock even more articulation, and let those tyres stretch to the ground for all-important traction.

The Rubicon also has Selec-Speed Control (an adjustable low-speed cruise control for 4WDing that can be set between 1.0-8.0km/h), and Off-Road+, which adjusts throttle and traction control, among other systems, to best suit the terrain.

What’s also handy about the Rubicon is that, via the off-road pages on the multimedia screen, you can monitor your 4x4 system, as well as vehicle steering angle, pitch and roll, and the status of the diff locks and the swaybar disconnect system.

The two-door Rubicon has a listed 257mm of ground clearance and 760mm wading depth. While I didn’t experience any water crossings that deep this time, I did do plenty of driving on coastal sand, just inland from a beach, and there were deep rutted sections, so I saw clear evidence of its running clearance.

When it comes to approach, departure and ramp-over angles, the higher the number the better and the short-wheelbase Rubicon checks out with listed measurements of 44, 37, 27.8 degrees respectively, and this small 4WD climbs up and over even steep rocky hills with sharp crests, without ever being in danger of scraping the earth with its front, under-carriage or its back end. 

The Rubicon rides on BFGoodrich Mud-Terrain KM2 (255/75R17) tyres – real muddies – and those are strapped to 17-inch alloys. These are good tyres and the 17-inch set-up is good for off-roading.

The shorty Rubicon is not a big vehicle and so its Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM, 2404kg) and Gross Combined Mass (GCM, 3751kg) are not massive figures.

It’s not renowned as a towing platform of note but it pays to know that its tongue download is 150kg, towing capacity is 750kg (unbraked) and 1497kg (braked).