My foz shrugs... ~ 1000 lbs (454 kg) of people on board, no prob.
 

Not a big deal, probably busted the gross weight on the placard, but the other evening had company and we all piled in the Foz and went to dinner. Okay so its not that big of a deal, but that is the most weight I've had in it passenger wise, 5 people counting me driving. Rode great, didn't feel mushy, acceleration barely effected. Love this car.

Yeah, the Forester handles it all quite nicely, went up to the cabin a month or so ago with four large men (myself included), along with food, water, beer, luggage and ammunition for four days. Never even broke a sweat...

I was really impressed with the way my Outback handled tipping the GVW rating.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...GhettoDrop.jpg

That's around 850lbs of wood pellet bags in the back. Add me and its around 1000lbs in the cabin.

Despite the compression of the suspension (never hit the bump stops) it handled quite well, accelerated about the same (EJ22, too) and the braking was excellent.

A little something extra in there
 

Actually, the girlfriend and I drove up to Portland, OR from Yuma, AZ in October which was a great drive that I would happily do again and again. But on the way back through the east end of Oregon we spotted some very nice trees that had been chopped up in a wooded area. Long story short, we got better gas mileage with about 500 pounds of tree stump sitting over the rear axel than I have ever seen in any of my foresters. She started calling it the magic tree stump because we were averaging around 29mpg from that point on, where as normally it will only do 23ish if I am being nice which I usually am not.

Not to derail the thread, but you might want to think twice about stealing wood hanging around on the side of the road. People do in fact process fallen wood and sell it, use it for erosion control, or use it personally. Someone chopped it up for a reason. Just because something looks like it's lying around in the woods doesn't mean it doesn't belong to someone.

There were people there, no way we could have gotten it in the back ourselves. Took 4 of us to put it in there (as I said it weighs nearly 500 pounds). On the other hand, I have lived in nearly every corner of the U.S. and a few other places in the world and I would say generally that claiming someone publicly as a thief with out at least looking into things first is a bit of a faux pas.

I towed another car several miles using a tow strap...probably exceded the towing weight limits. It was a Ford Escort SW, with auto and A/C, plus a 200lb driver.

It was over 3 years ago and my subi shows no ill effects...it still has the factory clutch at 102k miles!

Considering that people unwittingly steal firewood/lumber all the time "because it's just lying around in the woods/field" and don't realize that , your post read like you stole it, and might give others the impression that that it is ok. "We saw this neat bike lying on the side of the road, and put it in our car." is a different story than "We saw these people had a bike lying around, and they gave it to us". Anyway, end derail, glad you didn't steal.