Traded a 2020 Tacoma TRD Pro for a 2021 Crosstrek Sport. The Tacoma was a good truck, but for me it wasn't great. I made the mistake of trading a 4Runner TRD Pro for the Tacoma and it was a mistake. I realized after having the Tacoma for a while, that if I were going to have a truck, a full size would be a better option. At the moment I live in a condo, and have no need for a truck at all.
The second part of the equation is my wife is going back to school so we are tightening our belts a bit. Her car is already paid for, but my truck was not, and it wasn't cheap. Having a less expensive vehicle really made sense and I hated driving around such an expensive vehicle that I didn't really care for that much.
Third and final reason. I currently live 5 miles from work, so driving a vehicle that averaged 15 mpg was no big deal. Even with gas being $1 more/gallon this year than last year I still would have been okay with it, but I have the very real potential to be doing A LOT more driving in the future in order to take advantage of some career opportunities.
For all of these reasons I set out to find a vehicle that got at least 30mpg on the highway, AWD, was a hatchback or wagon, had heated seats, apple carplay and was less than $30k (preferably somewhere between $25-28k)). Those were really the only things I was looking for in a new vehicle. Surprisingly there are a lot of cars in this category right now, but in the end the CT came out on top. I bought the sport over the limited one because it was a little cheaper, the second X Drive mode (will probably never use it LOL) and the synthetic seats over real leather. Real leather is nice, but I have found the upkeep to be ridiculous and not worth the effort. Synth over cloth is a plus because I have a big ole lab who loves riding in the car. The base and premiums we're passed on because I really liked the 2.5 over the 2.0, and because it fit my price range (settled on $27k) I was happy.
I've had the car for about a week now and am very pleased with the purchase! The car has a lot of get up and go, and I swear the interior is just as big as the Tacoma's! The my Subaru app is great when it works, but I've already had to reload it twice. So far, this is the only complaint i have with the car and hopefully it will remain that way or resolve itself???