10 Things My Family Loved About the 2024 Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness

Make no mistake, the Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness is a small car – but when you sit in the rear seats, you wouldn’t think so at all. Now, if you were Shaqueile O’Neil you might face the issue of where to put your knees. For us regular folks, though, the rear seats are just as cozy and roomy as the Forester.

Putting my children in the rear seats was just as easy as any other Subaru I’ve driven, but they were definitely miffed about not having as big of a window as they have in my Forester. However, my front-facing toddler loved the big windshield and sunroof to look through.

My husband loves the amount of space — it’s decent for a man who’s 6’1″.

The Subaru Crosstrek has always been a great deal, coming with a load of safety features and creature comforts with a starting price of $25,195. All trims, except for the Sport and Limited editions, come with a trusted Subaru family recipe of an engine: the 2.0-liter four-cylinder Boxer engine which makes 152 horsepower and 145 lb-ft of torque.

The 2.5-liter engine in the Limited and Sport Crosstrek produces 182 horsepower and 178 lb-ft of torque, in case you were looking for just a tad more get-up-and-go.

The Wilderness is the most expensive model at $32,195 MSRP at the base, but fully loaded with a 10-way powered seat and a Harman Kardon sound system can be a little more than $44,000. Which is still a bargain for a Subaru you won’t have to modify to hit the trails.

You won’t be able to tow your family’s boat with it or race a Corvette with a Subaru Crosstrek of any level, but that’s fine – it has plenty of peppy horses champing at the bit to do your daily driving for you.

My toddlers are very much like their mother: always needing something to drink and chronically clumsy. That being said, some sort of beverage is always been spilled in the back seat.

Thanks to the waterproof StarTex seating in the Wilderness (and the Onyx editions of the Ascent and Outback), cleaning up chocolate milk, water, or juice was easy. I stressed a lot less giving them liquids knowing all I needed was something absorbent to clean it up.

In my cloth-clad Forester, I have to first dab it up, spray it, and then shampoo it out if I don’t want it to stain. Not in the Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness.

All Wilderness editions come with the Wilderness brand gold accent trimming, a dedicated badge, tougher-looking exterior trim, and more aggressive tires. They’re all attractive to me, but there’s something about the ruggedness of the additions that looked particularly good on the Crosstrek.

Everything just felt complimentary on the Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness – even my oldest daughter said she wanted to kiss it every time she saw it. Of course, she doesn’t know “handsome,” but she regularly said, “It’s cute, mommy! It’s cute!”

That’s not something she’s said about any other car I’ve driven, mind you.

Anyone with a Subaru, particularly an older one, knows mileage isn’t one of its strong suits. Living in Bend, Oregon, I’m lucky if I get over 18 miles to the gallon regularly driving at low speeds for short distances with lots of stops in between.

The Crosstrek Wilderness, despite its lift kit and all-wheel drive, was getting an average of 24 miles to the gallon. That’s only two miles to the gallon less than the 2024 Hyundai Santa Fe Hybrid I drove just before the Wilderness arrived.

That alone blew my mind. My best friend with a 2018 Crosstrek said she regularly gets over 40 miles to the gallon when she drives long distances, so I can only imagine how well this would do on a road trip.

Like the Outback and the Forester Wilderness, the Crosstrek comes with a lift from the factory. Instead of the standard 8.6 inches of ground clearance, it comes with 9.2 – which is almost as much as a Jeep Wrangler.

Now, anyone who’s lifted their car will tell you it changes the ride. It feels a little more sloppy, it doesn’t handle turns as well, and it just feels… different. I didn’t notice a difference at all in the Crosstrek Wilderness. Except maybe that it was that much easier to get in and out of.

Otherwise, it handled the highways, tight corners, and city driving just as well and comfortably as the standard Crosstrek.

The photo doesn’t do it much justice, but the interior quality of the Crosstrek Wilderness (or of any Subaru, really) is great. The design language, the screen integration, and the feature controls being right where you’d expect them to be made it easy to get familiar with.

The interior isn’t anywhere near as fancy as the Outback’s, but it makes sense – the Wilderness is meant to collect dust and dirt from the outdoors, not envious looks from your girlfriends.

I loved the wireless Android Auto feature and how quickly it would connect to my phone, and the Harman Kardon sound system made every drive – even the short ones – that much more enjoyable.

Again, I’m going to preach about the visibility. It’s my favorite trait about Subarus. There’s essentially no blind spot in the Crosstrek Wilderness, and that’s thanks to large, open windows and a high seating position.

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The Subaru Crosstrek is noticeably smaller than its Forester sibling, but I was impressed with how well it handled being packed full of kids and their gear. Granted, if I had one before I had kids, I’d get a cargo box or a basket for the roof racks to hold luggage and camping gear, but it hauled my toddler’s daily items just fine.

However, I did notice the trunk’s entrance was narrower than in previous years. My girls don’t like a stroller anymore so I didn’t get to test out how a double stroller would fit, but it would definitely be a challenge. A single stroller would squeeze through just fine, though.

Aside from strollers, bikes would be rough due to the tight entrance, so you’d likely have to load them from the rear doors or just have a hitch installed and buy a bike rack.

For groceries, diaper bags, or your bags of Goodwill donations, it’s perfectly fine.

Bend, it’s safe to say is a very Subaru-y city. Many of my neighbors, like my husband and I, have multiple. Even then, when I was doing my daily chores I’d get neighbors walking their dogs complimenting the Crosstrek Wilderness.

Many asked me how I liked it with two toddlers, and it started a very sweet conversation. I may have convinced a neighbor or two to buy one with three Subarus in front of my house.

Everyone knows no one is more brutally honest than a two-year-old. I was in Seattle giving tours of the International Auto Show when it was picked up, but my mother-in-law called me to help calm my daughter down when she saw the Crosstrek Wilderness being driven away.

It happened only one other time, and that was when the Subaru Ascent Onyx Edition was being backed out of my driveway. Maybe she likes Subarus because her parents do, or maybe the company weaved some sort of sorcery into the upholstery to bewitch her.

Either way, her feelings towards the car she’s driven around in every day would absolutely influence what I buy, and her sentiment toward the Crosstrek (and Ascent) has been noted.