1993 Subaru Impreza Wagon - RELIABILITY / OPINIONS

At that age, any car's predicted reliability has less to more to do with it's past care and present condition than the MODEL'S repair record. I'd suggest finding a local mechanic familiar with soobs and paying him $50/whatever to inspect it before you get serious. If he finds 1 or 2 problems, get estimates and use for bargaining. If he finds low compression or torque bind, maybe shop elsewhere. the Forums at

contain lots of folks with experience keeping older soobs running and may be a source of good ideas in addition to folks here.

Carl

I have a 1995 Impreza wagon with 47K miles on it. It is not a really good car for long trips, we did Florida to Kansas for a funeral when the Legacy got bent and it is an experience. Other than that if you change the oil and filter every six it goes fine forever. Roof rack is sort of questionable, the load limit is 250 lbs IIRC and I wouldn't put anything up there for a long fast run. The windshield rubber molding came loose and was a bear to find a replacement and get somebody to do it. Only problem in 11 years or so.

My daughter has one of that vintage and it has been a really reliable and driveable car, serving her very well for about 5 years now, It ran really well until a bad oil change screwed the engine up (they forgot to torque the drain bolt), causing other issues, direct and indirect, that I had to fix.

If it weren't for that, just regular maintenance will keep it running pretty well.

The engine may be prone to a very specific oil leak: There's an oil separator cover that is made of plastic that can crack, located under the drive plate (auto) or flywheel (manual). When cracked, oil will seep through where the tranny and engine meet - nothing really serious, but you may need to add 1 quart every third fill up. Found that out when I pulled the engine out, fixing the aforementioned screw up. Now the engine does not drop any oil. The replacement separator plate is made of aluminum.

Remco

I'll second that. A 1993 is an old car and the statistics/others' experience will have little value in predicting what sort of problems you'll find in a 13-year old car. Heck, any known electrical/mechanical problems with a 13-year old car would have been fixed long ago. You're now looking at everything from interior pieces to mechanical simply wearing out.