Legacy Reliability in Car and Driver test

[Fernely]

In my opinion consumer reports is completely worthless as far as automotive reviews, and almost worthless as far as most of the other things they review. I've often had very different opinions after owning products they recommended. CR aside . . .

 

My Legacy has honestly been pretty awful as far as build quality. Since the second week I owned it I've had problems with the TPMS system. I've been without the car at least 4 days solely because of that issue. They've replaced everything, the module, all sensors, wiring, and it's still a problem. And worse yet they refuse the just "turn off" the system claiming it's illegal to do so. I've also had my moon roof fail twice and was without the car for two days the first time. The arm rest extension rattled like a mofo after a few months and needed replacing. The drivers seat frame has been replaced twice, I lost the car for 3 days between those two swaps. The CD player stopped working and needed to be repaired. The change holder died and just started flopping open, still needs to be fixed. My brake rotors are severely warped after only 11K miles, and I haven't tracked the car or driven it like a nut. And I won't even get into the oil burning issue as that is still being diagnosed. I'm guessing I'll prolly be needing a new short block. Needless to say, I have a real love/hate relationship with the car. My coworkers constantly give me a hard time about Subaru's claim to being reliable. My legacy has been at the shop more in the past 10 months than all of their Audi's, BMW's, Volvo's, and Ford's combined. At this point I'm honestly kinda regretting not ponying up for an Evo X MR.

 

Holy Crap Lemon law for sure man. I am on the complete opposite side of the spectrum not a single issue. Take it to the Dealer for all the maintenance schedule. Bought an MY08 in June 07, 47,000 miles later still the best car I have ever owned.

[gfxdave99]

Well there have been some reports of beer cans in the front bumpers when people do headlight swaps

[Garandman]

The headgasket failure was on the 2.2 liter engines...

 

Do a search on it.

Likewise: the 2.2 is stone-cold reliable.

 

I got it from Subaru tuning shop who found the problem on mine at the 60,000 spark plug change and I took the car to the Subaru dealer for pressure check before the power train warranty expired and they find a small leak to the cooling system.

After that I called couple of Subaru tuning shops and experts and they told me Subaru still could not solve this issue because the leak coming from the constant movement of the engine head at acceleration with high pressure.

They have problem with the material quality of the head gasket and the material of the studs.

I’m not saying it will happen on every single engine after 50,000 but the tuning shop told me, it's common after 50,000 on the 2.5 liter boxer turbo engine, which used on the wrx, sti and on the legacy GT.

They are confused.

 

The 2.5l NA Phase I (DOHC) four used primarily in the Outback from 1996 to 1999 is the engine that has had problems with the head gaskets, although there have also been some problems with the Phase II (SOHC) engine used in the 2nd Gen Outbacks. 2.5T's with blown head gaskets are relatively rare: if not those problems would be all over NASIOC, which gets a lot more traffic.

 

It's not impossible, but you should name to tuning shop and fill in your profile or go fish: your profile doesn't even say what country you are in.

[ScoopMan]

Piston ringland failure.

 

There.

 

I said it.

 

[captainhook]

Holy Crap Lemon law for sure man. I am on the complete opposite side of the spectrum not a single issue. Take it to the Dealer for all the maintenance schedule. Bought an MY08 in June 07, 47,000 miles later still the best car I have ever owned.

 

Sigh, FML.