Tested: 2023 Subaru Ascent Supersizes the Subie

The 2023 Subaru Ascent has something in common with luxury performance SUVs like the Porsche Cayenne and the Ferrari Purosangue. No, not luxury or performance—though it does proffer a reasonable measure of both—but a dedicated fan base thirsty for SUVs. Yes, Cayennes and Purosangues might sell to people who’ve never owned a 911 or a 458 Italia, but they were also conceived to prevent the brand loyalists from strolling across the street to the Range Rover dealer. Likewise, the Ascent exists so that Subaru devotees who outgrow their Forester or Outback can upgrade to a three-row model without leaving the fold. With its turbocharged flat-four chatter and deft four-wheel grip, the Ascent is immediately familiar and comfortable to anyone who’s owned a Subaru in the past 30 years. It might as well come straight from the factory with a Thank You Jerry bumper sticker and dog slobber on the rear windows.

Would the Ascent sway a brand-agnostic shopper who’d already driven a Kia Telluride, Toyota Grand Highlander, or Mazda CX-90? Maybe not, but it doesn’t have any glaring flaws, either, and Subaru treated its big lug to a refresh for 2023 that further refines its people-schlepping talents. The rear camera gets a washer to help clear the slushy grime when you reach the ski-mountain parking lot. There’s an intercom to help people in the front seats talk to (yell at?) denizens of the third row. Every trim except the base model now features automatic emergency steering, which takes evasive action if it can steer you around an immovable object while keeping the car in its lane. On a related note, the camera-based driver-assistance system adds a wide-angle mono camera to supplement its stereoscopic cameras, essentially improving its peripheral vision, and the brakes get a quicker-acting electric booster to help the car initiate a slowdown when it spies an impending collision. Cupholders? There are still 19 of them. That was enough.

The front end and taillights have been redesigned, but not dramatically—our letters pleading for a towering STI hood scoop have evidently gone unread. Under that hood, though, there is a WRX-adjacent powerplant in the form of a turbocharged 2.4-liter horizontally opposed four-cylinder. For SUV duty, the tuning dials were spun in the direction of ample torque rather than top-end horsepower. The engine makes 260 horsepower—a bit low for this class—but its 277 pound-feet of torque arrives at 2000 rpm and sticks around till 4800 rpm. With 4578 pounds of Subaru to haul around, that torque stat is important, and the Ascent feels plenty spry. We saw 60 mph in arrive in 6.8 seconds, and the quarter-mile in 15.4 seconds at 92 mph. So, not as quick as a 2003 Forester 2.5XT, but you can’t expect everyone in the family to live up to a legend like that one.

As with its acceleration, the Ascent’s other performance results are best described as fine—no missteps. It pulled 0.80 g on the skidpad, and stopping from 70 mph requires 179 feet. The Ascent is rated to tow 5000 pounds, which is pretty much industry standard in the three-row game. Superlatives are few, but the Ascent does have top-speed bragging rights against some of its competitors. So if you spend a lot of time on the autobahn, its 120-plus-mph top speed will allow it to blow by the likes of the Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid Max, which tops out at a governed 117 mph.

While Subaru’s engineers weren’t allowed to have too much fun with the turbocharger boost settings, its marketers sure did with the features nomenclature. Subaru’s 11.6-inch infotainment system, now standard across the Ascent lineup, is dubbed Starlink (not to be confused with a certain other Starlink). The Onyx Edition has seats upholstered in a synthetic water-resistant fabric called StarTex®. The distraction mitigation system is called DriverFocus®, the off-road settings are called X-Mode, the Onyx Edition Limited’s standard Harman/Kardon stereo system features QuantumLogic™, and the driver-assist system is named EyeSight®. Did Subaru somehow teleport a GM ad exec from 1955 to come up with jazzy names? We’re surprised the continuously variable transmission isn’t called the InfiniRatio JetMatic 9000 (it’s actually the Lineartronic®).

That transmission is a little bit noisy when it’s cold, with a Dyson whine accompanying rev changes, but it’s mostly transparent in its operation. Its eight simulated ratios are basically an admission that most drivers would prefer a conventional automatic, but at least it pretends to shift rather than hanging the engine at constant high rpm. Power is deployed through Subaru’s “symmetrical all-wheel-drive” system, which once meant a 50-50 front-to-rear torque split and a viscous center differential. The manual-transmission WRX is the only Subaru model still using that setup, and the Ascent employs a multiplate wet clutch to handle fore-and-aft torque shuffling. The system is constantly varying its deployment of power to the pavement, but unlike some all-wheel-drive systems, it never disengages either the front or rear axle. Which is great for grip, possibly less so for fuel economy—our 17-mpg observed figure undercut even the EPA city rating of 19 mpg, never mind the 25-mpg highway rating. However, we did see a solid 28 mpg on 0ur 75-mph highway test, so there’s that.

Had the Ascent been part of our Three-Row SUV Throwdown, its acceleration would have put it solidly in the middle of the pack, but its price would have been by far the lowest. For 2024, the base Ascent costs an inflation-busting $35,740, making it one of the most affordable ways to haul eight passengers in an all-wheel-drive SUV. Even the full-boat Touring, with its nappa leather interior, now tops out at just $50,040 (it was $49,420 for 2023). For context, the Kia Telluride SX Prestige AWD carried the lowest as-tested price in that aforementioned comparison, at $52,970. So the Ascent isn’t really playing the same game, not trying to catch the wandering eye of a Mercedes shopper. That’s apparently a sound strategy, since last year Subaru sold more than 60,000 Ascents. We bet most of those buyers were Subaru people already, but if not, they are now.

Senior Editor

Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He’s now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.