One of my larger fears when I bought my Subaru Impreza with a CVT transmission was that the transmission would fail early, but not early enough to be covered by warranty. I saw talk online about reliability problems with the tech, which was fairly new to cars, with the Impreza only being in its second year with them I believe. On last Wednesday, my transmission did fail, but luckily it is going to work out alright, as Subaru of America (SOA) is going to help me out.
I have been without my car for a week and it will probably be 3-5 more days until I get it back. Last Wednesday, I had a slipping / shuddering / shaking feeling occurring mostly when coming from a stop. Lots of lights shown on the dash, and the engine was throwing code P0700. I (slowly) took it into Cascade Subaru. The transmission is apparently dead and has to be replaced.
Subaru’s CVT’s made up to 2017 had longevity problems, and due to consumer complaints, they increased the warranty on them to 100k miles / 10 years, as opposed to a recall, which would’ve been much more expensive. I had just gotten to around 101k miles, so I had passed the warranty. I had been worried about it all along because transmissions can be quite expensive.
Cascade told me that the cost would be over $7000, but they were submitting the case to Subaru. For several days I was thinking I would have to pay that, and was considering whether I should give up on the car and just get another one, see if I could get a manual installed instead, how I would get that amount of money lined up, and other such things. Luckily, I didn’t have to make any tough decisions, because SOA is going to cover it entirely for me, excluding the $110 diagnostic. Such a relief. I am thankful to Cascade and Subaru for making this happen and keeping this customer happy.
I was disenchanted with the issues I’ve had so far, and paying for a dead transmission at around 100k miles would’ve pushed me to the level of “never buying Subaru again”. Now I feel like the car should be good and solid for another 100k, at which point I can’t expect too much more life out of it anyway. Makes me feel a lot better about it overall. It’s otherwise been a good car. At the rate I’m driving now, 100k should last me a very long time, and rusting of the body and other issues will probably kill the car before then. Maybe at that point Subaru will have some solid electric options.