Such might have been the thinking behind Subaru's soft roader, which latterly came in a Turbo version more likely to register on the evo interest scale. And now, with the old one just past its fifth birthday, there's a new one built on the second-generation Impreza's underpinnings. It, too, comes in Turbo form to make what is now called the Forester XT.
The style is evolutionary with those bulged-out, flared-back rear arches, and it's not instantly obvious what has changed. A closer look reveals that width, wheelbase and occupant space are up, even though the overall length has shrunk a fraction. The bulgy front wheelarch now leads into a flying crease to echo the rear, the front grille frowns instead of smiles (it's the new, serious face of Subaru) and the tail is tidier. A revolution has taken place inside, too.

Subaru says this is the company's best interior ever, but given the efforts to date that can't have been hard to achieve. A swathe of perforated, padded vinyl stretches across the facia and continues along the door tops whilst padded cloth inserts soften the doors at elbow level, and a coarse-weave cloth covers the seats' sitting surfaces with a look of rustic tech. Most parts that hinge or slide now fit snugly, move with a damped action and have rattle-proof linings - even the two roof-mounted sunglasses holders. Pity, then, that the surfaces not mentioned above still have a hard, unyielding texture, including the top of the dash, and that the facia architecture remains a largely flair-free zone.
Still, you could live with it because your mind will be on other things. The first distraction comes from the four-cam engine, a sweet-spinning, revvy thing whose pistons are moly-coated, whose injectors now have 12 holes each and whose large exhaust pipe amplifies (though not too noisily) the Subaru throb. There: instant personality. Its turbo lags little, too. That said, if you catch it off-boost in a high gear, uphill, the engine never gets to pass enough air to wake the turbo and achieve lift-off, and you're stuck with the unboosted flatness that arises from the 8.0-to-one compression ratio. So you rev it instead.

Revved, it delivers up to 177bhp - less than an Impreza WRX's 215bhp, more than a normally-aspirated Forester X's 125bhp - which is enough to fling the XT to 62mph in a surprising 7.9 seconds. No other soft-roader this side of a BMW X5 is that quick. And it gets all this thrust down ultra-cleanly, thanks to the four-wheel drive, the viscous centre differential and a limited-slip rear diff. What helps traction off-road helps handling on the road, too.

The flat engine helps lower the c-of-g relative to other soft-roaders. So does an aluminium sunroof frame, an aluminium bonnet and a less lofty build overall. You sit low relative to rivals, albeit high compared with an Impreza, and revel in low body roll and a feeling of being not far above the roll axis. This is a tidy, lurch-free handler with obvious Impreza genes, helped by stiffer anti-roll bars, a wider track and innovative suspension struts with rebound springs. First used on the larger, Legacy-based Outback, these help to return the struts quickly to normal ride height after a dip or pot-hole instead of relying on the body weight (which, in a remarkable u-turn in the evolution of the modern motor car, is lower than before). They also reduce pitch under acceleration and braking, and help control body roll.

Other new-Forester niceties include a standard CD player, a decent security system (at last) and lower benefit-in-kind tax thanks to improved economy and emissions. Here is a 4x4 that an evohead could contemplate owning, and you could even drive it, as I did, along a shallow river bed if you must. But, whatever you do, avoid the Style Pack bodykit. Gruesome is too kind a word.