SUBARU FORESTER
The Chevrolet Forester turns 20 soon and this very blue one is one of the finest around
Refurbished and packs extra oomph
BACK IN THE DAY, MY FATHER’S BEST friend owned a silver Chevrolet Forester. I must have been about seven or eight years old, but I was completely enamoured by the world of cars and that Forester was the thing I looked forward to the most on one of our many group road trips. Fast forward to 2020 and even among the sea of modern SUVs that have flooded the Indian market, the Forester still feels relevant with it’s brilliant boxer engine, an SUV body style, and stunning good looks.
This here is Rahul Giri’s Chevrolet Forester and it is painted in ‘World Rally Blue’ — the exact shade of Subaru’s WRC cars. Why Subaru? Because the Chevy Forester was a rebadged Subaru… Forester! It was actually the first car to be sold under the Chevrolet brand name in India, a sort of halo car at the time
— a five-seat SUV, with a 2-litre boxer engine producing 120bhp and 178Nm of torque. Oh, and it came with Subaru’s tried and tested all-wheel-drive system. While this may not seem like much, the near two-decade-old Forester can still outrun most compact-SUVs on sale today. The reason it’s such a rare sight, not just on our roads but in the classifieds as well, is that very few of them ever left the showroom. It was too expensive, not bold enough (compared to the brawny Ford Endeavour or the Mahindra Scorpio) and didn’t have as much space as its rivals. Even in 2003, the parts were expensive and the wait times were painful, and this ultimately forced people to stay away from an as-yet-unproven brand in India and stick to something more well known. But, a few people saw the immense capabilities lurking within and signed their cheque books.
Rahul bought his car from one such person, who owned it since it originally left the factory back in 2003, when it was painted silver. “When I bought the car four months ago, it was in very good condition, it barely had any problems,” says Rahul “it came with a full service history and I only had to change the spark plugs after I bought it’’. Rahul has since added KYB dampers, with custom lowering springs to give it an almost estate car-like profile. He’s also got bronze 18-inch alloys, wrapped in 235/40 Apollo tyres, to match the Rally Blue paintwork. “The headlights are brand new, imported from the UK and I ordered original Subaru badges from the USA”. The new headlights and the paintwork transform the Forester’s looks, it looks like it rolled off the
THE NEAR TWODECADE-OLD FORESTER CAN STILL OUTRUN MOST COMPACT SUVS
factory floor yesterday. It has all been done very tastefully and is just the start of a very interesting project.
Rahul was originally in the market for something Japanese. His dream car, the Toyota Supra, was out of budget and so were the handful of Mitsubishi Evos in the country. It was through a friend that he came across this Forester and it was the perfect match for him. Rahul wanted something unique and it is hard to own a unique car in Kerala — ‘mods own country’. Its poor sales figures certainly make it unique, but the Forester was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And internationally, it was an even badder wolf. “These cars came with turbochargers from the factory in some countries, including Russia where there are conversion kits available for our cars”. He is in the process of finding one of those for his Forester and possibly even an exhaust system. “Even the stock car sounds so good, thanks to the boxer engine,” but since Rahul primarily uses this car on the weekend, he is considering heightening that aural experience with a free-flow exhaust. The turbocharger kit bumps the power up to approximately 180bhp and the torque to 240Nm. Since the Forester was based on the Impreza platform, it could handle the extra power with ease and then some — an STI version in Japan even came with a 2.5-litre turbo-petrol engine from the 2005 Impreza WRX STI, producing in excess of 200 horses.
If you’re lucky, you can pick up a Chevrolet Forester for anywhere between `2-4 lakh, depending on the condition of the car and a few light modifications are more than enough to keep you grinning every time you take it for a spin. They are fairly reliable but should something break, almost all parts need to be imported and that takes time. So if you plan to buy a Forester, make sure to stock up on some essential parts. What adversely affects the availability of spares is that not many people actually got around to modifying the Forester in India. Sure, there are some running around on the rally raid circuit at the moment, but those are few and far between. However, the truth is that while these were (and still are) tough cars to live with, they are still rewarding to drive. And in today’s all-SUV-everything world, a Rally Blue, turbocharged all-wheeldrive Subaru is just what the doctor ordered.
Rahul bought this Forester for
Right: The bronze rims give this Forester a totally rally-inspired look. Below: Rahul’s car looks even better than when it was original approximately `4 lakh, and then spent approximately `3 lakh on the modifications and refurbishing. ⌧
The Forester is serviced at Techno Motors, Thammanam, they can be reached at +9190484-06238. The lowering springs were installed at Marvel Motors in Cochin; they can be reached at +91-81297-22333.
A RALLY BLUE, ALL-WHEELDRIVE SUBARU IS JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED