Are Subarus Reliable? My Experience Update

[Music] hey guys what's up welcome back to the channel welcome back to a new video by the title of this video you guys probably already realize that i already have done this topic before but it has been a little over two years since i've done that video and i wanted to do a little bit of an update since i have more experience more seat time more years under my belt with my subaru experience and also over the past two years there have been a lot more subaru wrx and sti enthusiasts that have picked up these cars or at least they're wanting to they're becoming more and more popular especially now that the sti is no longer being made so a lot of people have been coming to me recently and asking this question i figured i would go over my thoughts again kind of reiterate what i've already said but also add some experience to it since i've been driving this car for a couple more years since then and also i have done so much to this car so i just kind of wanted to go over the topic a little bit more a little bit more in depth just so i can put people's mind at ease now first off i just wanted to say thank you it's pretty uh humbling and pretty crazy to me to think that people reach out to me uh for this specific car you know i don't consider myself a brand ambassador or anything like that i don't consider myself a spokesperson by any means for for the brand of subaru but it's pretty cool to be representing in a way this brand and to actually think that people care about my opinion and want to hear what i have to say and just help them guide them in the right directions so it's always humbling when people always ask me those kinds of questions i get them so often it always shocks me it always surprises me that people still reach out and are asking me these questions even more so than ever so being able to represent this brand and kind of somewhat like i said be a spokesperson for them is pretty awesome it's pretty amazing to think that people like i said care about what i think and what i say and ultimately it ends up leading to them either buying or not buying their wrx or sti so let's get into it and have a little discussion so the question and topic that we are going to be going over in this video is are subarus reliable i understand this topic can get sensitive to some people and you know some people have certain experiences than others but this is just my personal experience i just wanted to mention that before we start getting into it this is just what i have experienced with my personal subarus over the last decade so let me first explain my experience let me explain to you the subarus that i have owned how long i've owned them and just give an idea of kind of my ownership and kind of experience with subaru now my first experience uh was in 2013 when i picked up a 2013 wrx hatchback i'll put a picture up on the screen for you guys so you can see it absolutely love that car i actually picked it up after my e46 m3 i wanted something that was comfortable had a little bit more room all-wheel drive manual fun and somewhat easy to maintain i absolutely love that car i actually still miss it to this day but that was kind of my introduction to subaru that was my first experience with the brand i owned that car for a little over two years i did prematurely sell that car i wish i hung onto it a little bit longer but overall i modified that car i went to stage one plus so i didn't go as crazy as i did with this one but i had a torque performance stage one plus uh tune with the cobb sf intake uh i did the turbosmart bypass valve i had a wheel suspension exhaust all the fun stuff interior stuff as well overall i did simple modifications i didn't go too crazy with it but in my two years of experience i had absolutely zero problems no hiccups absolutely ripped on that car all the time it was a lot of fun i drove that thing through literally a foot of snow i'll put another picture up for you guys uh of me going through one of the bigger snowstorms that we had when i had that car and was on all seasons as well i didn't even have winter tires on the car it was absolutely phenomenal drove through tons and tons of snow with no problem it's a very very well-rounded car i love that thing and that was my first experience and kind of introduction into the brand so quite a few years later i actually sold the wrx we're having our first kid so i wanted to get out of the car world for a little bit refocus my priorities so i picked up a 2015 jeep grand cherokee uh enjoyed that but i needed to get out of it as soon as possible i missed having a fun car so i wanted to get back into something fun four-door all-wheel drive manual something easy to maintain something that i can modify and something that was going to keep my interest for a long extended period of time insert a 2017 sti and that is what you're looking at right now so that was my second experience with the subaru i bought the car brand new for my dealer this is the exact spec that i wanted everything about it i didn't sacrifice anything this is exactly what i wanted and i got it and since then um you know we have done quite a lot to this car in terms of modifications i have 37 000 miles on the car i understand that may not be a lot to some this is not my daily driver this is a fun car now it used to be my daily but no matter what power level i was at no matter what type of weather i was driving through like i said in the beginning of this ownership i used to drive it year round i drove it through snow i drove it through pretty much every single thing you can think of i had no issues absolutely loved it and since then we have gone above and beyond to make this the most perfect in my opinion the most perfect sti that i could possibly think of it's right now it's 413 horsepower 358 foot pounds of torque 18 psi we've done a ton of stuff i've pretty much done everything you possibly can at this point and it is absolutely perfect i love this car so much and i am five and a half years into my ownership keep in mind this is the longest car i have ever owned that should tell you a lot the reason why i'm mentioning that is because usually my car ownerships are two to three years every two to three years i'm like okay i'm ready for something new i'm tired of this car i want to experience something new and this car for whatever it may be i just can't get rid of it it's just something that i'm absolutely in love with every single time i get in it it's still an experience it's still a lot of fun i still love looking at it obviously i still love modifying it it's just a fantastic car and it has never ever not once left me stranded it's never had a hiccup nothing it has always been reliable i had no issues with it and it has been my favorite car i have ever owned to date now on to the third subaru i was still owning my 2017 sti but my wife and i were expecting our second child and we needed something a little bit bigger my wife didn't want to move to a full sized suv so we wanted to look at something a little bit bigger than what she was driving which was a 2015 honda accord a great car but we wanted something a little bit more space so naturally we looked at the subaru brand and we picked up a 2018 subaru outback we actually leased that car since it was an exceptional deal and also we knew we were going to get something bigger down the line because we wanted to have more kids and grow our family and everything so we knew it was something that we weren't going to keep forever but the great thing about that car is about two and a half years into the lease we ended up picking up a three row suv because we were having our third child uh we needed something larger we ended up getting a kia telluride but we still had about eight or nine months left on the subaru outback lease what we decided to do is actually purchase the kia telly ride and i was going to take over the subaru outback lease i was going to drive it until the lease was up and then turn it in because it just worked out in our favor to be able to do that thankfully so since then this car no longer was a daily driver so since then this car sat in the garage and became a garage queen i was only taking it out on nice days and it was something that i never thought would be possible i always wanted to have a daily driver and have something fun in the garage and i got my wish so i got to spend some serious time with the outback just one-on-one driving it every single day driving it through tons of snow again again i'll put a picture up in uh with the subaru outback driving it through a bunch of snow it was amazing i love that car plenty of space honestly if you're not looking for a giant suv and you just want something a little bit bigger i could not recommend an outback enough but the reason why i'm mentioning the outback is simply because we experienced it it was my third time buying a subaru and yet again it was completely problem free we had no issues we literally just did the basic stuff oil changes uh filter changes that kind of stuff uh no problems it started up every single time went through whatever we needed to it's very very accommodating and also a reason why i'm mentioning that is because i've experienced subarus in all spectrums completely stock like the outback or all the way modified like my 2017 sti i've experienced the brand in all different shapes and forms um so to me i feel like i have a good representation of what the brand uh really is so when it comes down to reliability i'm gonna go over a few things as to why i think these cars are extremely reliable there's two things that i'm gonna go into just keep in mind the internet forums youtube social media what have you people go to these places to solve their problems they're never going out just saying hey this is the greatest car i've ever driven in my entire life it has no problems today it's great normally people don't do that people go to the internet to complain that is just what humans do for some odd reason and people gravitate towards that so when you see all those kinds of posts and videos and everything like that naturally people are going to get this impression that this certain car this certain motor this certain anything is going to have this type of reputation people gravitate towards negativity that's just the way things are people gravitate towards that people want to hear the sad people want to hear people screwing up unfortunately that's just what it is so the reason why i'm mentioning that is because i want people to have that in their mind when i'm going over these two things and a lot of people don't realize that and i want to make sure that people understand that the internet is a terrible place it's a place where people like to complain to try to solve their issues explain their problems and hopefully come up with a resolution so nine times out of ten you're going to see those types of posts videos what have you on the internet in general first thing that i want to kind of dive into is maintenance i know it seems like a very very simple thing but you will be surprised just how many people don't do the maintenance one thing i always preach is maintenance before mods i don't care if you want a front lip i don't care if you want wheels i don't care if you want anything aftermarket related if your car is not driving properly if your car is not up to date on the maintenance i'm sorry you are doing it wrong maintenance before mods that is extremely important and that is a big big reason why people end up having issues with these cars being in the position that i am and currently a lot of people reach out to me and explain their problems they're looking for opinions just to see if i can help them which i try my best they show me videos pictures what have you explained what's going on with their car um and they're like i don't know what's going on can you solve this problem nine times out of ten after they finish explaining everything and i ask them a few questions i did everything right i did maintenance and all that and i've had no problems but and then there's always that butt so normally i just kind of wait for that moment because it's usually like oh but i haven't changed the spark plugs in 275 000 miles it's always one of those things that people just forget to mention um and it usually just comes down to maintenance it usually comes down to you know buying a car you know seventh hand you know it's had 15 different owners and you really don't know the ownership history prior to that you don't know the maintenance history you don't know how well they took care of it you don't even know if it was modified prior so that is where people run into a lot of issues because you know they're buying these cars after multiple multiple owners you know who knows how they handle them who knows what the maintenance and everything was and that really really can affect your overall ownership if you're picking up the car even if you maintain it right if it still had problems in the past and you don't know about it it's going to have problems when you own it a lot of people ask me should i buy it used or new and i always recommend buying new if they were able to simply because you can start the history yourself you know exactly every little detail about the car you know that it's brand new it has you know seven miles on it and from here on out you'll be responsible you know everything that was done but all these times when people do buy you subarus unfortunately again nine times out of ten they probably have been modified nine times out of ten they haven't been maintained properly and nine times out of ten which is the second thing i'm actually going to go over is how the car was modified what modifications were actually done second thing i want to go over as to why people think these things are unreliable is modifications yes i get it these cars have a huge aftermarket support yes i get it people want to modify these things right away as soon as they buy them they're fun there's a lot of things to do with them but as we all know the ej motor specifically uh can be a little bit finicky and what i mean by that is there's many things that you need to do to this car if you're gonna modify it a lot of modifications that you do there's a lot of supporting modifications that you need to do with it there's a ton of other modifications that you should do before you do that modification or this one and again there's so many people that just don't do that they take the easy way out they just buy the cheaper option and they simply just end up having issues and then they end up blaming the car you know it honestly comes down to the owner and how they actually modify it you know my my specific sti is an example of how i would modify it you know if you really wanted to do all the bolt-on and kind of create it and make it the way that i have this is honestly the best way i think that you should do it doing all the reliability mods doing all the supporting mods with it yes it is expensive there is no question about it you are going to spend a boatload doing this right but if this is a car that you want to modify this is the car that you want to own that is just what you have to do i'm going to be blunt about it there's no other ways around it yes i understand there's going to be some success stories saying like oh hey i'm running 700 horsepower and i don't have a tune on the car and it's been totally fine for 10 years yeah there's going to be those stories there's no question about it but again most of the time people are going to have issues and i don't want people to have the wrong impression of these cars because they just didn't modify them correctly now believe me there is a lot to learn about this car there's a lot to learn of the maintenance there's a lot to learn of the modifications that you should or shouldn't do and that is what i'm trying to do on this channel and on my videos is trying to steer people in the right direction there's so many different ways to go about modifying these cars and all i'm simply doing is trying to direct people in the right way using reputable modifications doing all the reliability mods doing all the supporting mods with it you know doing those things will definitely make your ownership much better yes again it's going to be expensive to do it that way but honestly it is the way to do it this car right in front of me is a perfect example i have modified this car over the last five and a half years i went from completely stock everything all the way to 413 horsepower on coil overs on volk wheels on you know full exhaust equal length headers everything you name it fuel systems a completely different interior pretty much i've literally changed pretty much every single nut and bolt on this car to titanium you know it's i've done everything to it and my philosophy has always been the same no matter what car i have owned and that is to maintain it properly and actually to do it early don't wait don't procrastinate it do it early with these cars oil change every 3 000 miles spark plugs do them every 10 to 15 000 miles especially if you're modified doing coolant flushes often doing every 15 20 000 miles you know dip flushes trans flushes do them every you know 25 to 30k make sure you're doing that stuff you know don't push it off just saying i'll do it next year i'll do it next time do it now it's pretty cheap to maintain these cars you know if you have the ability to own a wrx or sti you can maintain it it's really not expensive to do that doing a full oil change by yourself with mo tool 5w40 you're looking at like 70 bucks to do that to do a spark plug change those things are like 40 bucks you know honestly it's really not expensive to do this stuff yes it does take some time but you're going to learn in the process you're going to learn about your car and you're going to stay on top of it knowing that it was done right by you so whether you're completely stock 2018 outback all the way to a heavily modified 2017 sti as long as you do the maintenance if you want to modify it make sure you do everything that you need to do to do it correctly and i promise you you're going to have a fantastic ownership i am living proof for that a specific reason like i said i've been driving subarus for the last decade i have done everything you possibly can do to them pretty much uh and i have had zero problems and i'm not just saying that for this video i have had zero issues every single time i got in any one of my subarus it has started up every single time i drove it it has done it flawlessly i drove this car seven hours there and back to wicked big meet not too long ago no issues whatsoever mind you it was also at 413 horsepower as well i had all the modifications that you see on the car right now seven hours no problem and that is simply because i stay on top of the maintenance that is simply because i do all the reliability mods that is simply because i've done all the supporting mods when i'm doing something to the car take the time save up and do it right so as i was editing this video i realized i never closed it out i don't know why i just slipped my mind i never got a chance to get it done so we got a couple mods coming in for the sti so there's going to be some install videos uh next week so be on the lookout for that but if you have any questions at all about the sti or my experience with subaru please leave them in the comments below but in the meantime keep it clean keep it simple and i'll catch you guys in the next one [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Scoobyfreak86

Views: 34,271

Keywords: Subaru, STI, Wrx, EJ25, Reliable, Modify, Maintenance, Horsepower

Id: gfUTD5hmhm0

Length: 18min 32sec (1112 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 22 2022