I'm disappointed in you bitoger's! Appears that nobody even addressed the original post.
Originally Posted By: edwardh1
the jd powers people rate them poorly as a new car, and so does consumer reports (in the readers survey for older in use cars).
something must be bad about them- what are their failure or problem areas?
JD Powers didn't rate them poorly. A large number of people that responded to the surveys had issues with the infotainment system, which Subaru has updated in the Legacy and Outback for MY2015, and pretty much the remaining models for MY2016.
But I don't blame you at all for misinterpreting the facts which the majority of the press does a poor job of telling you the details!
Quote:
First, vehicles that are all-new or that have undergone major redesigns continue to have more problems than those that carry over without significant changes. On average, all-new vehicles or major redesigns had 128 problems per 100 vehicles; vehicles without significant changes had 113.
And, among the all-new vehicles, the increase in problems was mainly, once again, in the areas of voice recognition, Bluetooth pairing and audio systems. Consumers continue to report that this new technology is hard to understand, difficult to use, or simply does not always work as designed, according to the study.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/automo...-year.html?_r=0
Quote:
First, as its name indicates, it's all about "initial" quality, measured by problems reported by new-vehicle owners in their first 90 days of ownership. If something breaks or falls off four months in, it doesn't count here. Second, the scores are problems per 100 vehicles, or PP100. So Power's 2015 IQS industry average of 112 PP100 translates to just 1.12 reported problems per vehicle. Third, no attempt is made to differentiate BIG problems from minor ones. Thus a transmission or engine failure counts the same as a squeaky glove box door, tricky phone pairing, inconsistent voice recognition, or anything else that annoys the owner.
Traditionally, a high-quality vehicle is one that is well-bolted together. It doesn't leak, squeak, rattle, shed parts, show gaps between panels, or break down and leave you stranded. By this standard, there are very few poor-quality new vehicles in today's U.S. market.
But what "quality" should not mean, is subjective likeability: ease of operation of the radio, climate controls, or seat adjusters, phone pairing, music downloading, sizes of touch pads on an infotainment screen, quickness of system response, or accuracy of voice-recognition. These are ergonomic "human factors" issues, not "quality" problems.
Yet these kinds of pleasability issues are now dominating today's JDP "quality" ratings. "Cars and trucks have never been built better, but frustration with audio, infotainment, and navigation features on new vehicles has never been worse," Automotive News senior writer Jesse Snyder pointed out back in 2012. "For the first time, complaints about such features surpassed those about engines and transmissions as the top category... [And] half the problems reported by vehicle owners after 90 days were design related – things that are confusing or hard to use rather than faulty or broken."
http://www.autoblog.com/2015/06/23/-j-d-power-quality-ratings-analysis/
That said, I have had my share of major problems with my Forester. I blew a turbo at 80k miles and I had to have a valve job at 130k miles.
Neither one of those issues would keep from considering another Subaru or even another turbo Subaru, although I might think twice about another first year car.
