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Cheers Pat.
I hope you and your family were not injured in the crash! A crash is always the worst way to lose a vehicle. Hopefully the Forester serves your family well for many years to come! What are the details.... color, miles, etc.?
Zoom meetings w/ kids & grandkids.
Speaking of crashes, my elder daughter and her husband were in a rollover crash recently in their ~1 year old Infinity Q50 suv with <11,000 miles. No injuries other than scrapes and bruises, car was totaled. Fortunately, the kids weren't in the car. She's getting a do-over in selecting her new car. So many choices...
For reliability, though, I think they're great. Our 2018 Crosstrek, which is the newest I've owned, is at 80,000 miles now with zero issues. The older ones have had their share, but mostly just maintenance-related things. All the new models use the F series of engines, so I think they should be more similar to the Crosstrek.
As far as automatic transmissions go, my experience with the CVT is positive. It is an efficient and responsive unit with no reliability issues given proper maintenance.
Now there's no hope.
Leave No Trace is a non-profit that works with the National parks and other organizations to minimize the impacts of vacations in nature.
https://lnt.org/give/subaru-vip-program/
"Purchase or lease a new Subaru vehicle with no haggling, no negotiation, no pressure – just a great deal on a new Subaru! Save between $1,000 – $3,000 off the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP)* (depending on model and accessories). In addition, your VIP price will be further reduced by any applicable zone or regional cash incentives in effect at the time of purchase. Special rates may also be available to qualified buyers should you prefer to finance or lease your new Subaru. Generally, all model lines are included in this offer, however all sales are subject to availability and retailer discretion.
Am I Eligible?
To be eligible for the Subaru VIP Program, you must be an active member of Leave No Trace for at least six months prior to requesting a VIP form.
What is the Process?
Once you have been a current member of Leave No Trace for six months, the process to take part in the Subaru VIP Program is very simple:
Contact your local dealer: Ask if they participate in the Subaru VIP Program. Also, make sure they have the vehicle you would like in stock, or can order the vehicle.
Contact the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics: Email Membership@LNT.org with the following information: Member ID Number (if you know it), Email Address, Phone Number, Home Address and the name of the Subaru Dealership you plan on working with.
The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics will send a request into Subaru of America: Subaru VIP requests are submitted to Subaru Corporate every 1-3 business days. Once submitted Subaru Corporate will email both you and your dealership within 24 hours with a VIP Authorization form."
Oil changes at my local Subaru dealer at $85, compared to $60 at the Acura dealer. Again, not a big deal, but it does seem like service with a Subaru might be more expensive.
But the Boxer engine has advantages, in that it's more naturally balanced, and has a lower center of gravity. Are there other advantages?
This 6-minute video goes over advantages as well as disadvantages of boxer engines. As he says, a boxer has "two camshafts, two camshaft seals, two camshaft sensors, two head gaskets, two exhaust manifold seals...There are more moving parts than an in-line 4-cylinder, and so more likelihood that you're going to be spending money fixing stuff"—at least in the long run.
Also, the engine basically has two banks vs. one bank on an in-line engine. This doubles the amount of sensors that can have issues (and the cost of replacing them)
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IIRC, I replaced the OE plugs on my Forester at about 85,000 miles (would need to check my records for exact timing), and I didn't really notice any performance issues at that time. I replaced the ignition coils last spring because it seemed like it took a little longer than expected for the car to start in the mornings. Though I'm not fully convinced that doing so made a significant difference, I would normally replace plug wires on a similar interval, so I figure this wasn't out of line (the individual coils that sit atop each plug replace a distributor and plug wires).
I'm over 130,000 miles on the car now. Additionally, I have yet to replace plugs on the Crosstrek, which is at 80,000 miles, and it runs as-new (well, as-36,000 miles, which is what it had when we bought it three years ago).
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2015 Subaru Outback 3.6R / 2024 Kia Sportage Hybrid SX Prestige
None of the recent cars I'm interested in appear better than the real world numbers of my Audi A4.
Haven't had enough time to check city mpg, but I did get one readout of about 20 miles of highway by resetting the trip computer just as I started out. This was in Louisville and there was a bit of traffic, and my speed was mostly around 60. By the time I got home the readout said 34 mpg. So going 70 probably you could get 32, especially once the engine is broken in.
The base Outback wagon has a list price with delivery charge of $30,240. Given that the average new vehicle these days costs about $47,000, the base Outback has a lot of features and room for the money. The base has the essentials, but they are almost never found on dealer lots, and so need to be special ordered. Plus you still have to use a key in the ignition to start them, and there's a limited selection of colors (no red), etc.
The Outback Premium has an msrp of $32,540, and so $2300 more. As I was now considering the Outback for my wife and the two of us, I imagined what the various things the Premium has would be worth to us.
Crimson Pearl color: $500
Heated side mirrors with turn signal indicators: 500
LED rear gate light: 200
Tinted glass for rear windows: 400
Heated seats: 500
Windshield wiper and rear wiper de-icers: 400
10-way power driver's seat with lumbar support: 500
11" screen with wireless AndroidAuto/CarPlay: 800
6-speaker sound system: 200
Rear seat vents and power outlets: 500
Leather wrapped steering wheel and shifter: 200
Dual zone climate control: 400
Cargo cover: 200
Starlink system (aka OnStar) : 200
So to me this seemed to add up to at least $5k in terms of being a more enjoyable, nicer, and functional car with a color my wife wanted. But Subaru tricks you a little from my pov, because after all that you still don't have remote entry and push-button start. You need to get Option package 13 with various things to get push-button start, but even with 13 you still don't get remote start, which is desirable for us because our garage unfortunately is filled with stuff.
Smart entry and push-button start: 800
Hands-free power rear tailgate with pin code: 600
Moonroof: 400
Blind spot and cross traffic detection: 1000
Built-in navigation system: 400
Remote start with app: 600
That seems like around $3800 to us, and so also worth it. The car had included at the factory rubber mud mats that we didn't want, and just left at the dealer for another customer, but otherwise the car seemed what we wanted and actually quite loaded and rather luxurious.
But we went $3k over our original self-imposed budget of $30k + TTL.
Oh, and getting option package 15 the Outback also gets slightly fancier contrast fabric for the seats that isn't completely back as it is with the Outback without 15. That lighter color areas are worth a few hundred bucks to us too.
It seems crazy to me that average new car prices are $47K (down a bit from their high in, I think, 2023)! The most I've ever spent on a car was $38,000, and that is about 50% more than the next car on the list. I've bought three new Subarus, and all were under $24K.
https://www.subaru-sia.com/production-volume
Here are some statistics on the Indiana factory....
https://www.subaru-sia.com/stats
In some ways, I was sad to see the fourth generation Outback (2010-2014) do as well as it did, because that really marked the end of Subaru as a driver's car and the beginning of the "safety appliance" era. Customers spoke with their wallets, and Subaru heard them, loud and clear!
Starting at 9 minutes on this video the same driver tries to drive up what appears to be a similar hill in the Mazda CX-50, but it doesn't make it.
We'll never intentionally try a crazy hill like that in our Outback, so more or less irrelevant in a way. But maybe good to know that in extreme situations a Subaru can often handle things?
Oil changes/oil filter every 6 months or 6k miles
HVAC filter: every 20k miles or so
Engine air cleaner element every 30k/2.5 years
Brake fluid every 30k/2.5 years
Rear differential fluid: every 60k miles/4 years
Spark plugs at 60k/5 years
Drive belt replace at 60k/5 years
CVT transmission fluid 60k or so
Fuel filter 72k miles/6 years
Radiator fluid: 11 years or 137k miles
The last one is the big surprise to me, bc I've never heard of radiator fluid lasting 11 years or 137k miles.
Since our Outback is a 2024, and we bought the 10 year/100,000 mile extended Subaru warranty, we need to change our oil every 6 months or 6k miles to maintain the coverage.
But it's interesting that it sounds like you sometimes go 10k or more for oil changes with full synthetic. I've never gone more than 9k or so with my Hondas and Acuras when the Maintenance Minder says that's ok, but it makes me feel a bit more confident doing that knowing that you sometimes go even more miles.
Every car + oil combination is different, but, the UOA doesn't lie: If the oil is healthy, the engine is healthy. So far, I haven't found the limit on any of my cars, but I am 100% content with annual changes regardless of mileage (though I normally do change the oil in my trip car after returning from Ohio). That tends to be anywhere from 8-12,000 miles. But, the Crosstrek had well over 16,000 on it when I changed it in May (forgot to change it after the trip last year!), and it passed with flying colors once again.
And, as long as I am doing a UOA with every oil change, I have no worries about warranty because the reports will support the evidence. I mean, I always do my own oil changes, and some people swear that doing that will void the warranty, so I guess one just has to decide what battles are worth fighting. I like conserving the resources (I legitimately use a quarter of the oil and filters I once did), and I also like knowing what is going on inside the engine, so it is a good pairing for me.
What brand of oil do you use?
This does seem to show that especially for a non-turbo engine that with full synthetic longer oil change intervals are a possibility.
Makes me feel confident I can go 9k in my Acura without worrying about it.
Is Amsoil an especially expensive brand, or is it in line with other premium grades of synthetic motor oil?
I use Amsoil SS in the Subarus, LiquiMoly Top Tech 4210 in the Q7, and Kirkland or NAPA store brand synthetic in my older rigs.
Since we have the Subaru extended warranty up till ten years, I hope our repairs will be close to nothing, knock on wood. And going by the Subaru manual service intervals, instead of what he recommends, I'm guessing that even having the dealer do it that our maintenance costs might be around $4k or so for getting to ten years/100k, including a set of tires. But who knows...
In the 10+ years that I've owned the Outback, I've put in about $6100 worth of maintenance and repairs, and that includes 2 sets of tires.
$10K seems pretty high, in my opinion.
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2015 Subaru Outback 3.6R / 2024 Kia Sportage Hybrid SX Prestige
When people take the time to add up the amount they spend on a long-term vehicle (just because the average age of vehicles on the road is >ten years doesn't mean that is overly common by a single owner), it is rare that they will be pleasantly surprised. However, it is even less common that the same person would then compare that cost to the amount they would spend on a replacement vehicle once, twice, or even three times during that same interval.
As CCBA'ers, we discuss often how to keep costs down on leases or frequent buys, laugh about getting new cars in lieu of replacing tires, etc., but, at the end of the day, once the vehicle leaves the garage, any dollar spent on it is nothing but vapor. So, let's do the math:
Maintenance/repair at $10,000 over 10 years = $1,000 / year.
Cheap new vehicle payment at $400 per month over 10 years = $4,800 / year (not confined to one vehicle over the full ten years!).
I can pay for a lot of maintenance and repairs annually and still come out way ahead on that one! For example, this year was a pretty expensive year for me in terms of maintaining my fleet. I had to replace the clutch on the 2013 Forester, put new plugs and ignition coils in the 2018 Crosstrek, replaced the turbo on the 2014 Q7 (among other items), etc.... I spent about $3,600 on all of that, or about $1,200 per car.
My numbers include both. Not that I’ve had a lot go wrong, but there have been a few costs outside of regular maintenance.
Tires were roughly 25% of the total.
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2015 Subaru Outback 3.6R / 2024 Kia Sportage Hybrid SX Prestige
Since it is such a pain of a job with the "new" F-series blocks, I read up about the coils to see if I should replace them. It was a mix of opinions, but one theme I found is that aging plugs puts more strain on the coils, and I think those plugs were well-aged, so I just decided it was worth the extra $300 or so for the four coils to simply reset the clock on both at the same time.
And, that car runs so much smoother now! Hopefully, it will improve the fuel economy a bit as well, which has distinctly lagged from its early days (we used to average about 36 mpg, and now are closer to 30; not all due to engine performance as I have lifted it an inch with heavy duty springs and replaced the broken front bumper shell with a steel aftermarket unit).
When I bought my wife's Outback, and even before, I was puzzled that Subaru recommended 60k spark plug replacements, when almost everyone else recommends 100k. But after doing some research I learned that the boxer engine has a "wasted spark," which means that it sparks twice as often per cylinder cycle compared to an inline 4-cylinder engine. So it makes sense that the spark plugs wear out about twice as fast.
Since I'm at nearly 90,000 miles on my Acura TLX I'm getting close to the spark plug replacement there, but might actually have another 20k or even 30k before it's really needed.