Whoa, somebody in MA saying they don't see older Subarus? You are joking right? Hell, there's a place right on the MA/NY line that does nothing but sell and service older Soobies... Rust and all!

Heading out to Western MA this weekend to a B-Day bash. Buddy has a 99 Impreza with 107K on it, and his wife has a 92 Legacy with 235K on it.

Two friends just got rid of their 84 and 88 Soobie wagons. The 84 had 310K miles on it, and was rusted out, hehe. The 88 was doing fine with 210K, with some rust in the wheelwells. These cars were taken across country and abused off-road to boot.

-B

 

It's not surprising that they'd burn more gas, since they are AWD. Still, a NA Legacy sedan or wagon gets 30 mpg on the highway. Pretty respectable for a large AWD car. They are also fairly light weight. A turbocharged, loaded AWD station wagon weighs roughly the same as the F-body did, and is several hundred pounds lighter than the GTO. Oh, STi's now come with a radio and if you are laughing at them, you haven't ever driven one.

Gold Rush - it's a long story, but yes I dont' have the STi anymore. It was a blast while it lasted, though!

 

I have no idea, but even when I was 8 years old I thought it was a bad idea. Granted, tires get hot on the road, but baked under the hood for years is NOT the way I'd want to treat my spare tire, especially when I needed it for any long distance!

 

With all due respect, I really ain't joking. When I'm driving around I tend to pay attention to the older cars I see...I like to see what lasts and what doesn't (granted, cars that were more popular "back in the day" are likely to have more stragglers, anyway). I really don't see a lot of older Subarus anymore...very few of the DL/GL/Loyale generation that were so popular around here, and I can't remember when I saw the last of the previous generation ('85 and older IIRC).

Overall they were good cars, and I know the engines indeed hold up well. I just took in on trade a '93 Lumina Euro that has 3 of those 4 Soobies beat...244k miles! I was proud...not the highest mileage trade-in I've had, but it ran great with those miles.

While I'm on the subject, the highest-mileage trade-in I ever took in was a '94 Bonneville SSEi...278k miles. Original supercharger...hell, most of the car was original. I believe they said it ate 2 water pumps, and the original tranny went at 197k or so...right before 200k.

Like my sig says, I want to run my GP up to and over 200k if I don't get too bored with it first

 

I got respect for anything designed by Porsche be it Porsche VW or Subaru.
Porsche=Genius

before you get bent out of shape porsche designed the boxer engine first seen in the vw type 1 then porsche and also subaru's

 

if you want to talk about rust buckets, get a 1980's Toytoa Truck. My cousin had an 89 with 156K miles who lived in central Ohio(not as bad of winter as MA) The front fenders had rust holes, the door jambs were rusted, rusted under mirrors, rust in bottom of doors, top of doors at the drip channel, and the bed was completely rusted out, you could put your whole arm through the holes in the side of the bed and get something out. He was driving down the road one day and hit a bump, the outer piece of the bed below the rear tire finally fell off. Ironically though, that truck ran like a swiss watch, never smoked, started up quickly, and didn't use any oil.

My dad swears by their little trucks, and they don't rust in TN

 

You know that Dr. Porche designed both the orginal VW Beetle and orginal air cooled 911. I don't know if he was the inventor of the air cooled engine though. Interestingly though, Adolf Hitler, comissioned Dr. Porche to design a car for the people. The idea was that every German family would have one, and drive them on the Autobahn. So Dr. Porche came up with what we call the VW Beetle. All those hippies were really driving around in the Hilter car. Definelty the definition of irony.

 

I remember growing up seeing Toyota trucks that weren't even that old with wooden flat beds on the back because the beds were just gone!!! Mid '90s ones seem to be holding up better, but still tend to have at least some surface rust somewhere by this age.

That's the one thing I truly hate about New England is the salt. Thankfully GM and most of the other car makers started using galvanized steel across the board nearly 15 years ago...you never see any GM cars rotted anymore that are newer than 1990 or so, thankfully. Can't vouch for other makers because I don't pay quite as much attention. I do know Honda Accords still tend to rot through on the back fenders...there are quite a few mid-'90s Accords with custom rear fender crowns

 

Yeah, Japanese automakers still suffer from poorly treated sheetmetal, as most early 90s models get rusted fenders and doors. American cars are better, although not as good as German. Audi, for one, treats their metal with zinc. My parents used to have 1984 Audi that was rust-free up until about 2001 / 2002, with all the salt they put in GTA/Ontario here.

 

1. I'm sure the "good" fuel economy is the reason why Subaru got the 2005 Outback classified as a "Light Truck."

2. Consumer Reports got 21 MPG with an Outback 2.5i, but they also recorded a 11.8 second 0-60 time. For a car that's pushing $29K, that's a pretty lousy trade off between economy and performance.

I don't think I accused Subes of being "heavy weights."

Did you trade just to get a radio?

Long stories are alright. Most of ProudPony's posts tend to be long stories.

 

No need to go on the offensive, Redzed...although I don't think you like Subarus very much.

I'll just mention that the '05 Outback actually gets better gas mileage than the '04, and the 05 Legacy starts at ~22,000 MSRP.

 

Bah, what light truck gets 21 MPG?

 

When you're a diehard GM fanboy, everything that isn't an F-Body is ugly.