2014 Subaru Forester XT at Abercrombie NP

G'Day all

I took the Foz offroading into Abercrombie National Park this weekend to test its limits as an off road vehicle, and stretched it to a degree of those limits in many sections. The day was very hot (near 40 degrees) so it was already operating without any real cooling at 10kmh or less the whole day and being asked to climb steep hills. I found how to really drive the CVT in difficult rocky uphill sections, and if you want to overheat the CVT on really steep sections - leave it in auto/X-Mode. It runs out of power very quickly as the ECU kills power drastically to protect the gearbox and engine from thermal damage - even with traction turned off. I found it best in S# mode and locked in 1st - with an occasional swap to 2nd - you regain full turbo power which it really needs to rise over large rocks on an already very steep track. VDC is a real PITA in these situations. Once I learned how to best drive it, it really surprised me. I think it's a great all round vehicle - it certainly goes places it probably wasn't designed to if you're reasonably careful.

No rocky track picks taken - I was concentrating too much so as not to damage the car. It went up grades that a LR Discovery 4 had to raise suspension the whole way and engage low range to tackle. I definitely had to pick my lines a lot more carefully and use more momentum to go where the Disco otherwise had no issue, but that was to be expected. The X-Mode system really, really works in most situations. Wombat holes were a no-brainer as you simply glide over the top of them and hear the TC system working away - quite impressive to experience. Without lockers, traction control or decent limited slip diffs, most full-sized open-diffed 4WD's would have had problems crawling over these if only two diagonally-opposed wheels had traction. Good stuff - great fun. Car VERY dirty - inside and out. The dust was similar to brown talc. It gets in EVERYwhere and is incredible slippery up the 35-40 degree slopes.