Subaru Forester - opinions??

[Decolliber]

I am looking at a 2001 Forester (31K miles) for my wife. We live out in the country, and have two very large dogs (GSD and St Bernard), so the combination of rear space and AWD is attractive.
Anyone have experiences, comments on this car, especially re reliability and stability? Asking price is $14.5K.

[Z-man]

I have a 1995 Legacy AWD Sedan: love it! The traction offered by their AWD system is amazing. I have the 2.2 motor, that I believe is available with the Forester. Plenty of power, and nice gas mileage.

IIRC, the Forester is built on the Imprezza platform, but the drivetrain and engine are used in all the model lineup.

I have had 140k trouble free miles with this car!

HTH,
-Z.

[osidak]

My wife drives a 2002 Outback. We both love it. The AWD in the car is second to none. We have the 2.5 H4 engine. 22K trouble free miles

[vash]

i just drove my friends forester on a ski trip. she is one of those oldfashioned girls that like the man to drive. it was either that or the snow. well, to tell the truth i was pleasantly surprised. that car is peppy, traction was great, and there is a ton of room. she told me that the only issue she had was having to take the car in for an alignment a few times. but even she admitted it was probably from kissing a few san fran curbs at full turn. the heated seats thing was a first for me. my next car is getting those!

[Adam]

Great cars. Watch the clutch, as many people tend to slip the clutch instead of letting it out properly. With AWD, it just burns up the clutch, so as a result, it wears a little quicker, but I know of plenty of Foresters (and all other Subarus) that have huge mileage on the original clutch. It's all about the PO.

Rear wheel bearings have been known to fail on '00/'01 models (a bad batch of bearings - most have been fixed by now), but other than that they're a superb car. Do US-spec Foresters get the dual-range transmission?

These cars are built for reliable high-mileage. I know of quite a few with upwards of 250k miles.

[jbripps]

My wife had a Forester for 4 years, bought it new when they came out in '98. I must say that it was a GREAT car, but we outgrew it when we had our second kid. I will say that if it's for dogs, you'll be fine. One of the best AWD cars I've ever driven in the snow.........I even took it out when there was almost 2 feet on the ground, what a blast. VERY stable car in all weather conditions. Oh yeah, never once had a problem, and even had semi-serious accidents with it, and held up just fine.

Regards,

[cegerer]

MY wife and I have owned 4-5 AWD Subaru wagons. Great experience overall, but the last one (a Legacy 5-6 years ago) had an automatic transmission that imploded at 1 1/2 years old with 60,000 miles. The Subaru mechanic told me it was a design defect and showed me the parts that failed and why. Subaru North America was absolutely terrible in taking care of this problem. In the end they offered to give us $250 off a brand new car but no help with the $2800 repair bill!!!!!!!!!!! They lost a customer for life. -- Curt