Originally Posted By: zzyzzx
The GF's 2002 Forestor was a pretty bad car, and rather expensive for what she got. She traded it on for a like new 2011 Edge that she loves. I had to maintain that POS car and really hated working on it. It drove more like a car 1/2 it's price. Had poor brakes, and was prone to issues.
I have an 04 Forester, same generation, I believe. your description is very accurate. It would warp the rotors every 30,000 miles. Was under-powered, pinged unless fed premium, stereo head unit quit under 10k miles, had BY FAR the worst sounding speakers of any car I've owned, and had an annoying habit of jerking every time you let off or pushed on the accelerator. 23 mpg. the only car I've ever owned that I didn't significantly beat the EPA highway estimate. Was glad to trade it straight up for an 05 Civic. The Civic, with snow tires, significantly outperforms the Forester in the winter with its [censored] OEM "B" traction-rated tires, and obtained double the MPG of the Forester (and didn't ping on regular gas), and is still going strong now at nearly 300k with no repairs other than front wheel bearings at 275k.
At the time Subaru had supposedly (again) fixed the head gasket problem, but now I see the continuing pattern of common failures in the 2004 year.
Subaru has a terrible habit of having serious problems engineered into their vehicles (failing wheel bearings, head gaskets, oil burning), and continually claiming its fixed and the same problems continue to crop up again and again each time. Wouldn't touch a Subaru at this point. I'll stick with good snow tires on a FRONT wheel drive car and save myself a LOT of fuel cost (and repair cost most likely).