rev up your engines, today I'm gonna tell you what you should know about Subaru
before you buy one, scotty's not a big fan of Subaru but I've got customers
with them and some of them are happy, so I'm gonna show you what to look for if
you're planning on buying a Subaru as an example, this 4 year old outback
it's loaded it's 4-door, fancy high gas mileage setup on it, the partial zero
emissions vehicle with symmetrical all-wheel drive, now my customer owns
this had always bought Toyotas, oh he did a little research and he said, I hope you'll
work on Subaru scotty cuz I'm gonna be getting the Subaru, in this case it
actually made sense, this thing is like twenty seven thousand five hundred when
it was new four years ago, if you were gonna get the Toyota equivalent with
all-wheel drive and everything, it was about forty five thousand dollars, so yes
I can understand why he bought the Subaru, we're almost talking twenty
thousand dollars less than an equivalent Toyota, take a look four year old vehicle
what's it got on it, sixteen thousand miles so he's averaging
like four thousand miles a year at that rate, maybe this thing will even outlast
him, they generally only have problems until they get to be higher mileage, now
as for the overall Subaru vehicles, generally they're not race cars, this is
a relatively heavy vehicle, it's got a four-cylinder boxer engine, it has been
souped up it puts out 175 horsepower, so it's fine for cruising around in, I
personally advise people with the Subarus to stay away from the v6 engine
it puts out like 275 horsepower, they just have more problems as they age, that
is basically a 6-cylinder boxer engine like a Porsche, and they have historical
problems of head gaskets blowing, and the horsepower they put out, a lot of times
burns out the transmissions because they're relatively weak transmissions on
these Subarus, but as with all Subarus except for the BRZ, it's got that fancy
all-wheel drive system, if you really have to have a good all-wheel drive system,
hey the Subarus make a good one, that's one of their big sales point, you live
where it snows a lot going mountain or going in mud, it's where they get a lot
of their sales, from Buffalo where it snows a lot
Toronto a lot of people like Subarus, but me I live in downtown Houston
and the last time I checked the nearest Subaru dealer is like 18 miles away, that
shows you there aren't that many of them, now they did try a few decades back here
in Houston, there were a lot more subaru dealers but a lot of them just went out
of business, they aren't that popular here, but they're intelligent all-wheel drive
system it does work good in the snow, I've rented them when I went to Lake
Tahoe in the winter, and I've had them in the Rocky Mountains in the winter and in
heavy rain and they do handle quite well, you get a lot of safety if you got an
all-wheel drive system, all four wheels driving you're gonna stick to the road
better, now some of the older four-cylinder boxer engines have valve
spring problems, they had to rebuild the whole engines and they botched up a
bunch of them too doing the repairs, this is a newer one so far it hasn't had any
of those problems I think they fix that, but if you're thinking about buying a
used Subaru, check out the history of that year's model and if it's one that
had to recall for the valve springs, stay away and don't even think about buying
it, whether it was repaired or not, I wouldn't touch those, now one of the
biggest problems and I find with Subarus is, it's kind of a niche car maker man
their parts, replacement parts can be super expensive and often you can only
get them at the Subaru dealer, as an example whenever I do need parts which
isn't often on this twenty-four-year-old Celica they're pretty readily available, there's
a big aftermarket so I can get decent aftermarket parts at a good price, but
Subarus heck I can get one that's five six years old, find out oh that part is
only available at the dealer and it's going to be three hundred and fifty
bucks, where an equivalent part from my Toyota might be $80.00, realized although
the price of the Subarus is much lower than the Toyotas when they're brand new
the parts are the other way around, the parts cost a lot more, and let's face it with
these boxer design engine, I mean we're talking about dinosaur technology, it's still
kind of a specialist thing fixing them, and it's often hard to find a good
mechanic knows how to work on the subarus, so take that in consideration if
you're the type of guy who's gonna buy a car and drive it into the ground, and gonna
have some repairs over time, if people can't fix them reliably and at a decent
cost, you might think twice, but if you're like my customer and don't use them much
that might be an OK buy for you, check out this there's remnants of
snails and acorns, obviously a squirrel has been living under here cuz he parks
it a lot, I'll have to warn him about that, and
if you really want to have an all-wheel drive vehicle that has a very good
all-wheel drive system, Subarus have been perfecting that stuff for ages, it might
not be a bad thing getting yourself a Subaru, this thing costs almost 20 grand
less than an equivalent Toyota Highlander, that's a lot of money
differential and as far as I'm concerned that's got to be one of the big reasons
that Subaru sells a reasonable amount of their vehicles in the United States, last
year they sold over 600,000 vehicles, so if you're looking for something got a
nice all-wheel-drive system, isn't a race car by any stretch of the imagination,
but you want transportation that's gonna be reliable, and not get you stuck in the
snow or the mud or the ice, maybe a Subarus for you, it's flat as can be here
the old ocean bottom, doesn't snow maybe once every 5 or 6 years for a few
minutes before it melts, I'll stick with two-wheel drive cars myself, so if you
never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that
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