Subaru Forester 2026 review: AWD Touring Hybrid long-term | Part 2

This month, my time behind the wheel of the Subaru Forester Touring Hybrid has seen me pondering the value of legacy. And I don’t mean the Subaru Legacy, if you remember when that was sold here. I more mean is there a dollar figure you can put on things like history, reputation and brand value?

Because if you’re looking to crystalise the threat that Chinese newcomer brands are bringing with them to Australia, look no further than the battle between the Subaru Forester and something like the Deepal S07.

One has legacy by the bucket-load and with it a reputation for quality and family adventure. The other is an absolute newcomer, selling on value and features, as well as an all-electric powertrain. Both are medium SUVs, and interestingly both are distributed in Australia by the same company — auto giant Inchcape.

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My Forester? It’s the flagship Touring Hybrid, and it lists at $55,990, plus on-road costs. The Deepal S07? Right now it's $49,990, drive-away.

So what price legacy, you ask? About $10,000, apparently. Now, there are some caveats that need to be applied here. As we know, competition dictates price, and with the Deepal being one of infinity new mid-size electric Chinese SUVs to have arrived in Australia, competition is fierce. But still, it’s a big jump.

So why spend more? Well, the Subaru isn’t overly flashy. In fact, its cabin is pretty basic-feeling in places — especially compared to the space-age and selfie-taking cabin of the Deepal — and the driver experience isn’t the last word in excitement, either.

But I’ve lived with the Subaru now for around 10 weeks, and nothing has gone wrong, nothing has annoyed me, I haven’t wanted to assassinate any of the safety systems (apart from maybe the driver attention alert) and it’s done exactly what we’ve asked of it. And that’s not something you can say of all of the Chinese challengers.

You can also Tetris-pack its sizeable (484 litres with the rear seats in place, and 1655 litres with them folded flat) boot with everything a family needs, and you generally trust the Subaru to get you there and back again with little excitement and even less fuss.

And that, for a lot of people, is worth paying for.

Having just spent a weekend helping staff the CarsGuide stand at the Sydney International EV Motor Show — in which Chinese brands took up almost every square centimetre of available space — I can tell you there are plenty of people who see it like that. Or to put it another way, many are rightly wowed by the fancy new vehicles and tech being rolled out by the Chinese brands, but aren’t quite ready to take what they see as a risk on a new name. That time will come. There’s no doubt. After all, Japanese vehicles were once in the same boat, as were the Korean brands. And look at them now.

So, on to the big question — fuel use. To quickly recap, the Subaru copped heat for releasing hybrids that weren’t as efficient as their rivals' tech, and this Forester is designed to address that, debuting the brand’s new “strong hybrid” powertrain.

The promise is 6.2L per hundred kilometres, but month one saw me hovering around more like 6.9L/100km. That number is falling, though, with the average use dropping to around 6.6L. That’s still not the best in the business, but it’s getting closer.

A final win for the Subaru this month. Now that I have to squeeze a baby seat the size of a small elephant into the back seat, I can tell you not all mid-size SUVs are created equal. In some, the rear space is so narrow the baby seat ends up pushing into the front passenger seat, minimising that passenger's leg room. But not so the Forester, which feels designed for families in both rows and the boot.

And with that, it's onwards and upwards to next month.

Acquired: September 2025

Distance travelled this month: 587km

Odometer: 3276km

Average fuel consumption this month: 6.9L/100km

Note: The author, Andrew Chesterton, is a co-owner of Smart As Media, a content agency and media distribution service with a number automotive brands among its clients. When producing content for CarsGuide, he does so in accordance with the CarsGuide Editorial Guidelines and Code of Ethics, and the views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.