To make a point: According to the brand, 96% of all Subaru vehicles sold in the last 10 years are still on the road.
The significance to us of a 25-year-old Forester in Green Metallic over Slate Gray? If you visited GRM World HQ back in the day, you would have found a Forester looking just like th…
This was clean. And cool to see. It also makes you realize how small “bigger” cars once were.
To show what CUV proportions should be.
David S. Wallens said:
...To make a point: According to the brand, 96% of all Subaru vehicles sold in the last 10 years are still on the road.....
The problem with statistics is that you need to understand statistics to understand statistics(!).
What is this saying? What are the numbers for other brands? Are they all very close to that? Is percentage on the road a good basis for determining reliability?
The data is apparently from a 2021 study, and says it's a higher number than Toyota or Honda. Doesn't mention any other brands (?). More importantly, does not take into account miles driven (e.g. say one brand sells a lot of commercial vehicles with get a LOT of miles, while another primarily sells to retired people and very low miles).
This article talks about makes with the most cars to make 200,000 miles, which is likely a better measure of reliability (determining an appropriate measure is very important in "proper" statistics). In that case, Subaru only ranks 7th. Toyota has a rather significant lead in this case! It doesn't show Subaru, but it looks like Toyota might be twice as likely to reach 200,000 miles.
Yes, when marketing and statistics meet, be very cautious!
....The iSeeCars study looks further at the car brands that have the percentage of a car brand's vehicles that have over 200,000 miles. In this report, Subaru is seventh on the list and has 0.8 percent of its vehicle lineup with over 200,00 miles on the odometer, which is below the average of all car brands at 1.2 percent...
....The report reveals the car brands with the most significant percentage of cars with over 200,000 miles are Toyota (2.3%), Honda (1.9%), GMC (1.8%), Chevrolet (1.6%), and Ford (1.5%), above the average of all vehicles....
https://www.torquenews.com/1084/subaru-touts-new-vehicle-longevity-now-only-ranks-7th-reliability
(yes, I know the links in the story to studies link right back to the same story they are in!)
Chicago Auto Show
Still on the road on their second engine because the first one blew a HG and Subaru owners will pay to have a new engine put in vs buying a new car.
I have a REALLY hard time believing there are more 10 year old Foresters on the road than 10 year old RAV4s. If I cared enough I'd look at the study and find the holes in it. I'll let someone else have those Subarus.
In reply to CyberEric :
I assumed engine replacements were cheaper, since it's so common
Sorry to thread-jack, but does anybody else remember Nissan's print ad showing an old Datsun pickup, complete with its original owner?
The guy seemed to be well into his eighties, and was clearly still very satisfied with his truck.
His advice to prospective purchasers was, "Make sure you like the colour."
To remind us that they didn't always build AWD Corollas.
It's funny that they show the car that old at the auto show while they are also discontinuing a lot of the parts for the older ones. Typical though lol.
I think that so many Subarus are still on the road is because that's where they broke down, and nobody bothered to tow them to the junk yard... =P
CyberEric said:I have a REALLY hard time believing there are more 10 year old Foresters on the road than 10 year old RAV4s. If I cared enough I'd look at the study and find the holes in it. I'll let someone else have those Subarus.
Here's the issue, they're not saying more, they're saying a higher percent. Less Subarus were sold, so less to break, less to get hit, etc. it's easy to manipulate.
Having owned one of those (that got WRX suspension and a Stromung muffler), once you replaced the HG's at around 100,000 miles they were pretty bulletproof. When we bought our (used) one we factored in the probable cost of HG replacement. Local Subaru-only shop could slam that job out in a day, undercutting the dealer significantly, and using superior gaskets than the OEM. The only other thing that killed Subys of that vintage was rust, or the occasional transmission if an automatic.
Every Suby was built on the same basic platform then, and like a 911, had been refined endlessly since the 1970s. The HG issue was an unfortunate blunder on their part.
You never see 10 year old Subaru on the road up in the NE. They either rot out or the HG goes bad. My brother bought in to the "it's Love" marketing crap Subaru was pushing years ago and he then had 20 k miles of nice driving followed by 40k miles of fighting with the dealer with an over heating problem followed by the heads being replaced due to head gaskets. Now this was supposed to be under waranty but somehow he still ended up having to pay several thousand dollars. 5k miles later at the first oil change after the new heads were replaced the teck at the dealer comes back and said your head gaskets are leaking and it will cast you thousands to fix it. This all ended very poorly in the owner of the dealerships office essentially him demanding what he had paid for the repair back. This was followed by him walking across the street and purchasing a rav4. As he put it that car caused 4 years of extreme stress in his life. His yearly vacations to Maine were always him wondering if he was going to make it (he was stranded twice). Getting the rav4 and dumpstering his Forester was one of the best quality of life choices he has ever made.
With all the HG issues there is no way they are that many Subaru cars from 10 years ago on the road.
dean1484 said:With all the HG issues there is no way they are that many Subaru cars from 10 years ago on the road.
A 10 year old or newer forester doesn't have an EJ motor.
I feel vindicated
prodarwin said:dean1484 said:With all the HG issues there is no way they are that many Subaru cars from 10 years ago on the road.
A 10 year old or newer forester doesn't have an EJ motor.
Who cares it still had HG issues (at least my brothers did).
What is an EJ motor? I don't speak Subaru motor code.
FWIW, this one looked clean up close. It was an automatic. Still, very cool to see a manufacturer display a classic that the masses might not picture as a classic.
Also, Subaru had puppies.
He was so cute. And tuckered out. Hopefully he goes/went to a good, loving home.
David S. Wallens said:Also, Subaru had puppies.
And love. They sold love and puppies not cars. 😂🤪
dean1484 said:prodarwin said:dean1484 said:With all the HG issues there is no way they are that many Subaru cars from 10 years ago on the road.
A 10 year old or newer forester doesn't have an EJ motor.
Who cares it still had HG issues (at least my brothers did).
What is an EJ motor? I don't speak Subaru motor code.
EJ is what was used prior. The EJ25 was notorious for HG failures.
Current series of engines is the F engines, and the are not (yet anyway) notorious for HG failures.
dean1484 said:David S. Wallens said:Also, Subaru had puppies.
And love. They sold love and puppies not cars. 😂🤪
And I so loved that little puppy. He was so smol.
te72 said:I think that so many Subarus are still on the road is because that's where they broke down, and nobody bothered to tow them to the junk yard... =P
Even as a Subaru owner I find that funny.
My Outback is now on 146K. If it does pop the head gasket I will give serious consideration to replacing the engine. The car is a Swiss army knife.......it fits my needs really well and it's the last of the 6 speed manuals.
Steve_Jones said:CyberEric said:I have a REALLY hard time believing there are more 10 year old Foresters on the road than 10 year old RAV4s. If I cared enough I'd look at the study and find the holes in it. I'll let someone else have those Subarus.
Here's the issue, they're not saying more, they're saying a higher percent. Less Subarus were sold, so less to break, less to get hit, etc. it's easy to manipulate.
Just to clarify, that is not what they are claiming, though it is certainly right to be suspicious.
They are (somewhat amazingly for marketing) using a proper measure (quantitative wise) of percentage of cars since that controls for raw numbers (e.g. larger or smaller production numbers do not change the percent). The question that I (and the article) posed, was that percentage of cars (again, controlling for production number) making it to 200k is likely a much better measure (answering the question wise) of reliability, where Toyota seems to dominate, which of course makes it rather obvious why they didn't use that measure(!)
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