I bought my last car brand new… drove it over 80k miles and had 3 warranty claims in total. One was a weather seal pealing up on the rear window. The second was a problem with the alignment adjustment bolts in the rear – they had seized up. And the third was a check engine light (CEL) for a vacuum leak.

All were fixed promptly and correctly. The first time.

I’m at just over 11k miles with my WRX and I have already lost count of how many times I’ve been back to the dealer. Given, some of them are dealer issues and some others are car issues, but still. It’s a bit ridiculous.

Let’s highlight some of the car problems:

  • Rear seat latches/strikers rattling (both sides) – replaced under warranty
  • Rear seat latch/striker rattling again (driver’s side) – waiting on parts
  • Front right wheel bearing going back – waiting on parts
  • Power steering rack issue (unsure of ACTUAL issue at the moment) – waiting on parts

The rattling bits are kind of a minor thing – but 1) it’s a mechanical rattle with replaceable parts, not a plasticy/trim rattle and 2) they were both replaced once already and now are doing it again. This should be a stupidly easy fix of just replacing parts… but apparently not.

The wheel bearing has been getting progressively worse for the last two weeks or so. Initially I thought it might be the tire wearing funny, but rotated the right side tires and it was still there. And to be honest, the power steering problem is a complete surprise that they apparently found when investigating the wheel bearing. As I mentioned, not sure exactly of the actual problem with it yet.

In any case… parts have been ordered as of today and I will have to drop my car off for practically an entire day of repairs. But my problem is that with a car that is less than a year old and less than 12k miles, these things should NOT be happening. So either I got some variety of lemon or Subarus are junk. Ok, maybe not junk… but WTF?

And just to get this out of the way – before anyone makes any claims of my autox activities causing these problems, I present my counter argument: my previous car. My tC lasted nearly 5 seasons of autox without any problems even close to what I’m finding right now. Not to mention I would like to believe that a WRX is built to withstand a bit more abuse than a lowly Scion.

Once my car is actually fixed and I get it back, I will be calling Subaru to go through all of these things as well as the problems with this particular dealership… which could be another post entirely.