Used car recommendations - Toyota-Hyundai-Kia?

[Slickcraft]

Originally Posted by fatlazyless

That's a lot of hooeey-balony!

The leaky Subaru head gaskets were in the earlier 2005 or so, years. For a 2011 the head gasket is good-to-go, basically forever.

The timing "belt" is a timing chain and never needs replacing.

For the water pump ...... just forgetaboutit ..... no worries.

For $100 you can get Subaru road service for one year, and drive it until it breaks down, will not go, and get it trucked in to your choice repair to repair it.

Or, New World Auto on the north end of Main St in Plymouth has their own tow truck so's just phone New World ...... helloooooo!

It was a 2009 Forester that the head gaskets went on in 2016. Also the drive shaft had to be replaced as the U joint failed. Overall very expensive on a Sub as the engine has to be pulled. That was no baloney unless $1,700 is pocket change to you.

In 2016 a new design head gasket had been in place a few years but not many Subs had 100K miles on that design yet. So the fix was just a promise at that point. Time to move on.

Alan

[8gv]

$1,700 in unexpected repair cost is not trivial.

The decision to repair or replace is heavily influenced by current sky high used car prices and a potential long wait for a new one.

If financing, it doesn't take many of today's car payments to get to $1,700.

My Subarus have been good to me.

After the warranty is up they go to my daughter and sons.

So far they have three of them well over 100k miles with no significant expenses.

[SailinAway]

Originally Posted by Slickcraft

It was a 2009 Forester that the head gaskets went on in 2016. Also the drive shaft had to be replaced as the U joint failed. Overall very expensive on a Sub as the engine has to be pulled. That was no baloney unless $1,700 is pocket change to you. In 2016 a new design head gasket had been in place a few years but not many Subs had 100K miles on that design yet. So the fix was just a promise at that point. Time to move on. Alan

I agree with you. For me personally, Subaru permanently tarnished its reputation with its failure to correct the head gasket problem much earlier. I did the footwork for a head gasket replacement on a Subaru for a friend. It took a huge amount of research to understand the problem and figure out what needed to done. For one, thing, defective replacement parts were still being stocked in warehouses, and you could only avoid that by knowing the serial numbers of the defective ones. If they failed every 80,000 miles, as they did, you could be looking at replacing your head gaskets twice while you owned the car, rather than never, as with most cars.

It will be a long time before people forget this long saga. After that experience, I would never buy a Subaru product. They put their customers through hell for many years. Some years after they claimed that they had solved the problem, a former Subaru service manager told me they had not.

[DickR]

You will spend at least $20K for a new car, and likely more. If you get 10 years out of it, that's $2K/year. If you spend that each year in repairs, you break even, so laying out some money to buy a few more years isn't a waste. To me, 100K miles isn't that old, as many cars go easily beyond 200K miles.

As for Subaru failures, sure, they have had some problems over the years, as have most kinds. Most notable for us was the "oil consumption" issue Subaru and others had in model years around 2011-15. In trying to meet CAFE requirements, some manufacturers didn't get attempts to cut engine friction quite right, and excessive oil consumption was the result. Some manufacturers were stingy regarding what they called "excessive" and what they would do to make things right. Subaru wasn't the worst in terms of excessive consumption, yet they had a quite decent standard on what was considered excessive (1/3 quart over a 1200 mile test run).

What you get in service on something like this can vary with the dealer. When we got the notice about the oil issue on our 2012 Forester, after about 80K miles on the car, I went out to the garage and pulled the dipstick. There wasn't anything showing. Since the car was due for an oil change anyway, I took it in right away and told the shop what my concern was. Measuring the oil drain out, it was 3 quarts down. When the next change was due, I took the car to the dealer where we bought it, they changed the oil at no cost, and the 1200 mile test run thus began. After that run, I took the car back, checking the dipstick before leaving home (low by over the 1/3 quart). I guess they didn't want to do any remediation under the warranty, at whatever rate the parent company would pay. Bottom line: not only was there no drop in oil level after the car was back out of the shop (out of sight from me), there was a bit more oil in the crankcase than at the start of the 1200 mile test! Basically, they had added about a half quart on the sly. Needless to say, that dealership will never see us again.

A few months later, I took the car to another Subaru dealership and explained what had happened. Another 1200 mile test was run, and this time, as I watched, oil was added to bring it back up to level. After doing a few calculations, the service manager told me we needed a new block. We got a loaner car for a couple of days, while the new block was installed. Net cost to us: zero!

[fatlazyless]

Talking about an oil consumption problem, I drove a brand new 2013 Toyota Scion xB to 221-k miles and it needed another quart oil added with every gasoline fill-up. I got a heck of a lot experience pouring oil into the fill hole without a funnel and bought many, many quarts of the Walmart brand oil that used to cost $2.78/qt before April 2021 when I stopped driving this silver Scion xB.

In December, 2021 I sold it to the guy in the Laconia Daily Sun classified for $300 who is looking to buy used Japanese cars and who presumably will clean it up or something, and resell it.

Allstate paid me $1935 in February 2020 for a hit & run, two right side doors smash-in that I bondo-ed just enough to pass the state inspection by closing up four small holes, and spray painting silver.

Where is this car right now? Was it patched up and resold for $2000 or something? No, it got re-sold for $2500 .....ha-ha-ha ..... just kidding ..... and do not know?

Used cars can and will have hidden problems like oil consumption, or a no-start issue that happens once the battery dies because it's not getting charged up by a problem in the electric. Buying someone else's problem ..... another name for buying a used car ..... you take a chance???

Last August I bought a 2014 Subaru Crosstrek with a 5-speed and you can still buy a brand new 2022 Crosstrek with a manual, a 6-speed, which seems like one speed too many when a 5-speed is all that any normal, rational, safe-driving human could ever ever ever need! Hey there SUBARU .... you need to go back to that 5-speed ...... and forgetabout the 6-speed!