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CATALINA ISLAND, CA – At the Airport In the Sky – which consists of a 3,200-ft. (975-m) strip of asphalt, a stubby terracotta-roofed control tower and a single white-washed, World War II-era hangar – planes don’t land so much as they drop from the sky with a thud and wailing rubber, flaps fully extended in what seems an all-out bid to stop before plunging off the green mountaintop into the Pacific Ocean.
It’s an oddly appropriate start to a day of testing the ’09 Subaru Forester here, where the plucky cross/utility vehicle will negotiate, in no particular order, one impossibly steep grade covered in gravel, football-size rocks and ruts deep enough to knock loose a molar; unimproved mountainside roadways with dangerous shoulders that fall steeply into tangles of scrub oak chaparral; a narrow, 2-track ridgeline along one of the island’s highest points; and the occasional Island Fox or herd of bison, the latter left behind by Western film makers in the 1930s.
There’ll be no errant maneuvers off the closely mapped route, lest drivers face the wrath of fiery environmentalists hell-bent on keeping automobiles off their 22-mile (35-km) slab of paradise. It’s dicey business to be sure, but an assignment the extensively redesigned, all-wheel-drive Forester handles reasonably well.
Right out of the gate, however, the Forester reveals its single greatest weakness – a 4-speed automatic transmission overmatched for the environment. Even utilizing “sport shift” mode, the transmission’s gearing doesn’t allow for a lick of engine braking, which means plenty of foot brake to creep down Catalina’s mountainsides.
An hour or so into the drive, stops to drink in the island’s magnificent views are punctuated by the unmistakable smell of frying brake pads. Clearly, the CUV would benefit from an extra forward gear.
