Kilometres travelled
50,000 - 75,000 km
Did you buy this car new or used?
New
How much did you pay? (including all on-road costs)
33000
What were your needs when you bought this car? Has it fulfilled those needs?
We were looking for a safe, modern, reliable, practical family car. The Impreza had a good range of active safety features, was recently released as an all new model and Subaru had been scoring well on worldwide reliability scores. On everything other than reliability it was a satisfactory vehicle. We had 2 significant safety recalls and then a catastrophic transmission failure requiring a new transmission to be installed at just short of 3 years and about 40000 kms.
What were your initial thoughts about the car? Tell us why it appealed to you.
The car was initially very appealing due to the combination of features and interior space in a convenient sized car. There was good boot space, which was important as we had a small child with a large stroller. The combination meant we were able to fulfill our needs with a car, and not have to sacrifice the driving aspect of the car by having to buy an SUV
What have you discovered since owning the car?
The experience with the dealership was poor repeatedly, what was said and what actually happened was different on a couple of occasions, the feedback during the repair process for the failed transmission was appaling, the dealership created a fault while doing this work they could not rectify, which was a very easy to fix fault when actually looked at, and ar every stage left a negative experience. The car was adequate when running, but after all the issues left no confidence you wouldn't have another major failure
What do you like/dislike about the car?
We liked the suite of safety features, we liked the styling and it was adequately economical on fuel. We lost all confidence in the car and Subaru NZ after the transmission failure. It took over 9 weeks before we received the car back, with almost no updates provided along the way, except where I called to denand an update. Initially Subaru NZ wanted to just replace the internals of the transmission, which would have added a further 3 weeks to the time the vehicle was off the road. After repeated complaints about the delay in repair and eventual suggestion that we would have to lodge a claim with the motor vehicle disputes tribunal as the repair time was unreasonable they accepted to replace the transmission as a spare was available. They did not provide a loan vehicle while the car was off the road.
Any other comments on the car?
Avoid any Subaru with a CVT, the risk of catastrophic failure of this is too high and the cost of a replacement one is half of the original vehicle price if sourced from Subaru NZ
Reliability
1
Features/technology
4
Performance/economy
4
Value for money
4
Overall rating
2
Lastly, would you buy this vehicle again?
No
Why would/wouldn't you buy it again?
It was a lemon, 2 major recalls and a transmission failure in 3 years. Will never interact with Subaru again.