Take the warranty or pass?

doodlru

I just put money down on a 2010 Outback limited, finalizing the deal and taking delivery tomorrow night. I was offered the 7/70 warranty for $1150. Good deal or not? Should I even take the warranty? I'm always against warranty's, but this is a first year car, with a new design CVT. Factory does go 60k on drive train....

easypar

I passed, although I'm not sure my dealer offerred as low a price as yours. But regardless of the price think about this, you're paying $1150 for an extra 10,000 miles! Depending on the miles per year you put on the car it's probably not worth any amount.

First year car? Not so much, new CVT? Yes. But it's not like they threw this thing together, slapped it into their top sellers and sent them out the door. The CVT has been around 50 years or so, the design/materials is/are new, but with Subaru's vaunted reputation for being "bulletproof", and their growing popularity in the wider US market, I'm sure they looked really hard at the CVT.

My bet is that "if" something untoward started happening to the CVTs in the out years, Subaru would be very generous with a "hidden" warranty, an upgraded fix, and/or a higher than expected guaranteed trade in on an new Subie. After all, by the time any problems manifested themselves the CVT will be in every car they make.

Congrats on your purchase.

easypar

ateixeira

Good point, the powertrain is already 5/60. You are stretching the 3/36 bumper-to-bumper warranty to nearly double the miles, though.

xwesx

You also have to consider the applied deductible to that extended warranty when factoring the price. From what I have seen, a 7/100 with zero deductible for about $1200 is about the best you're going to find.

However, when considering the mileage limitation of the warranty, you have to consider how many you drive per year. I will be well over 100,000 on my car at seven years, but if you only put about 10,000 a year on it, that extra 30,000 miles of coverage is a moot point and the 7/70 becomes a more attractive offering depending, again, on the associated deductible.

ateixeira

I agree, and since I have 2 cars that applies to me.

I do about 10,000 miles per year in my minivan and about 6000 miles/year in my Miata.

My wife drivers her Forester less now that she's working from home. I'd prefer to get a 10 year, 60,000 warranty than a 7/100.

xwesx

I am a little embarrassed to admit it, but, after eight months, our new Forester is at about 12,500.

ateixeira

Do you ever park, or just drive it constantly like a taxi? :P

xwesx

Hahahah; I am starting to think it is the latter by how often my wife fills it up! I only get to drive it once every week or two. Most of the time, I am driving my Escort to commute. Even then, I typically only put 800-1000 miles per month on the Escort.

tbone_rare

I bought a used vehicle and was offered the warranty coverage at the time of delivery. At the time of purchase, the warranty was out on my vehicle. I decided to take the warranty offered. It added 4 years and 75,000 additional miles. I've had to use it twice and it's already more than paid for itself. The new cars offer such good coverage, that's one reason why your price is relatively inexpensive. The company doesn't have nearly the exposure they had in the past. Bottom line....I'm not sure I'd be a buyer.

tbone_rare

Which direction did you decide to go? Congratulations on your new vehicle!!!

doodlru

thankyou all for your input. I didn't give the whole background, I had a 2009 OB with the 7/70 warranty, the GTP trade was nearly what I paid.... that is the only reason I traded to the 2010. I was able to cancel the warranty, take the cash, and "finance" the warranty at 10 payments, 0% interest auto billed to my cc. I got the warranty price down for the 2010 to less than the 2009 cost, so it was only like $100 more due to the used value over the 18 months.

So I did go with the new warranty. Funny part is I blew a tire last week, in reviewing the docs, I had road hazard, so they filed the claim on my behalf, with luck I get that paid too. The tires cost me more than the "loss" on the waranty, so I might actually make money on this!

I don't drive much, traded with 14k after 18 months, so 7/70 should be more than I need.

ateixeira

Lucky duck!

rschleicher

I'm in the high-mileage camp - my OB is 7 months old, with almost 14,000 miles.

So my bumper-to-bumper std. warranty will be over when the car is only a bit over 1.5 years old, and my power-train warranty will be over in a bit less than 3 years!

On the other hand, the vast majority of my miles are on the highway (albeit sometimes in heavy/slow traffic, so I hope I am wearing out the engine and tranny at a slow pace....

raybear1

Thank you everyone for your inputs on this forum. It's been indeed helpful in getting our 1st OB. We've financed it. We are pretty excite !!!! Now we will be putting lot of mileage on this new subie and we were wondering if there were some "high mileage warranties" out there that we could buy? A high mileage warranty vs extended time warranty. The mileage would be just highway mileage. would this be manugacturers or aftermarket brand? what would be the best approach? We are expecting our delivery w/i a month.
Again, thank you for your input, Regards.