Does Subaru have a serious CVT reliability problem?

This is how relationships with brands can get destroyed in the service department. If car companies still wonder - or care - why people never come back, here’s why…

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This is exactly how brands and their reputations, and the consumer support for them, gets destroyed by dealerships and their service departments.

This report is courtesy of a man named Will Toms:

I purchased a new Subaru Outback ‘Premium’ in June of 2016. My wife and I, retired and now living on the aged pension, expected that this would be our last new vehicle.

It is garage, treated with care, serviced every six months in accordance with the log book,it’s five-and-a-half years old, and has travelled only 80,000 kilometres since new.

So that's not all that much when you think about it; probably about average mileage.

The car has been serviced on average about every 7,300 kilometres the car has never been off-road and has never towed anything it is not even fitted with a towbar.

On the 22nd of January, roughly a month ago, while travelling to Sydney from our home on the Gold Coast, just outside Coffs Harbour, the automatic CVT transmission started to make a noise. I limped into Coffs Harbour and left the car with the local Subaru dealership Geoff King Motors.

This is supposed to work isn't it? The car's not supposed to do that, but having a support network en route is kind of helpful - you'd think.

I contacted the dealership and Subaru Australia on Monday and expressed my belief that because the car has only travelled 80,000 kms and that it is only six months out of its five-year warranty that the replacement of the transmission should be covered under some kind of warranty to determine the root cause of the breakdown of the transmission it was removed and sent to A&B Automatic Transmissions in Melbourne for analysis…

When you look at a car maker website they go on and on endlessly about their highly qualified technicians being the only ones who are able to provide you know this and that and A-level support.

So, why does an authorised service centre like a Subaru dealer in Coffs Harbour need to send a CVT transmission to Melbourne, which has got to be 1500 kilometres away, to diagnose a fault? Strange. 

That would mean going straight past Sydney (Where Subaru Australia is based) to do that for starters, which is about 450 kilometres closer. I really don't understand why that has to happen to diagnose a problem with the transmission on another side of the continent - that just sounds like abject rubbish. If it is true, it really does make you question the true level of service quality, doesn't it? At least compared with the website rhetoric.

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Just to be clear, this is the previous generation, not the new Subaru Outback model which has so far not had any major CVT transmission issues in the public domain. There’s also a new Subaru Forester out which you should consider if you’re looking for a reliable five-seat SUV with all-wheel drive and a big boot.

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I’m not sure if that's the policy or not, to send all transmissions there for diagnosis, but if it is, it just seems flat out whacked and inefficient, not to mention costly and potentially an anchor to progress for Subaru in Australia.

They talk about being “All 4 the driver”. Well, how about being ‘all for the customer’? Surely technically training and expertise should be available in Coffs Harbour, given there’s such a massive off-roading community up there who might consider a Subaru if the customer service and technical training was impeccable.

Their analysis found that the failure was caused by oil leaking from the front diff into the automatic transmission, through a failed seal and I guess that makes sense. Although I was asked to pay 1500 bucks for this analysis, the dealership will not forward the report to me.

Well done, Geoff King Motors. Dude pays 1500 bucks for a report and yet you won't give it to him. In what universe is that moral and ethical? Obviously I'm only relying on Mr Tom's version of events here and the truth may be different, but if that is true, that is flat-out unfair, immoral, unethical and anti-consumer, in my view.

I'm working on what I was told over the telephone by Mr Toms. I'd suggest that it's a standard operating procedure of dealerships, when there is any dispute, to minimise the transfer of information, to make it hard for you, if you decide to go to DEFCON 1. It's just how this works.

Based on the A & B report, Mr Toms says:

Subaru Australia has declined to pay for the repair under what they call their “goodwill policy”. They based their decision on the fact that the failure was not within the transmission but rather the seal between the differential and the transmission…

To which I would retort: Who gives a damn what failed? The car has not been reasonably durable.

If you’re shopping for a new vehicle and need to understand which transmission to buy, here’s my comprehensive guide to the four main types of transmission >>

He continues:

However, the seal is not a serviceable part and has not been leaking, to my knowledge, because my garage floor is clean and free from any oils…

I'd suggest that that's probably a misunderstanding about how the front transaxle works uh mr tom says the seal must have failed during my trip from the gold coast well i don't think so because the cvt and the front differential are sort of together in the one unit called a transaxle and hypothetically it would be possible for a seal to fail in the differential and then oil to leak into the transmission without physically spilling any oil on the garage floor okay because it's basically a transaxle is a differential and a transmission together and that's what gets the drive to the front end of the symmetrical all-wheel drive and then to the rear end they've got a split prop shaft that runs all the way back with a sort of universal joint or whatever kind of uh flexible joint in the centre of it anyway that's just a misunderstanding and

that's completely okay as well on the part of mr tom's because he doesn't have to understand the mechanical layout of the car he just has to pay for it and quite unquote enjoy it right.

He says:

Any reasonable person would expect 10 years or 200,000 kilometres for a part like this. Shouldn't this seal be expected to last the reasonably expected life of the car?...

Yes, it absolutely should, especially if it's not serviceable and even if it is serviceable, you've had the car serviced, so it's meant to be reasonably durable. This is the central overarching thesis of the rest of this discussion.

He says:

Geoff King Motors has quoted $11,600

Presumably that's on top of the $1500 bucks to investigate the problem in the first place, so if that’s the case, we're looking here at about $13,000 to repair the transmission for a couple of old age pensioners.

I need a car so I have authorised the repair and I'm hoping to pick the car up next week. I am appealing for your help to encourage Subaru Australia to be reasonable and cover the cost of the repair.

Yours sincerely,

Will Toms

Many consumers are ignorant about how consumer law works and there's little excuse for that because consumer law changed on the 1st of January 2011. Certainly there are no advertising campaigns or government-funded awareness efforts, and carmakers definitely don’t make a habit of saying they comply 100 per cent with Australian Consumer Law in their brochures or marketing stunts. ‘New Volkswagen Amarok - if a major park fails, we'll repair it, by law.’ None of that.

The old consumer law was thrown out and the new one was ushered in, which is important  because they're chalk and cheese.

In the previous regime, prior to the first of January 2011, when the warranty on a product expired, whether or not you got support from the retailer or the manufacturer/importer of that product, was absolutely down to them. Some of those manufacturers had so-called ‘goodwill policies’ where they would help you out by covering maybe part of the cost of the repair, maybe supplying the parts while you pay the dealership labour. But the decision was entirely up to them - what they charged, who paid it, everything. If you were seven days out of warranty, that was completely up to them to determine your outcome.

Based on what would be the potential damage to the brand, in my view, (if they just bent you over versus would you become a brand ambassador and offered repeat business).

But after the 1st of January, 2011 -  more than 11 years ago now - that changed.

The current version of Australian Consumer Law has a legislated guarantee of acceptable quality. Go to the ACCC website and read ‘consumer guarantees’ here >> Find the section called ‘reasonable durability’, then come back.

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How consumer works for you in situations like this

The legislation is the backbone of this issue here because it covers everything - toasters, washing machines, TVs, cars, flatpack furniture, bedding - anything retail, essentially. If a pen lasts you 12 months, you've done really well. If a car only lasts you 12 months, that’s bad.

This is why the legislation doesn't define what is ‘reasonable’ in the case of all consumer products because essentially that legislation would be endless. The term reasonable is ultimately determined by a court if matters reach that far. But it's pretty clear that with a car, because you're paying 40 or 50 grand for something like an Outback, a consumer should expect it to last 10 years and some distance like 160,000 - 200,000 kilometres. That seems reasonable. It probably would seem reasonable to a court as well.

Obviously, the failures do not cover things that wear out ordinarily in the course of use, like brakes, tyres, headlights and taillight globes, things of that nature. But important things like driveline are covered, provided you don't abuse the car by thrashing it or by not getting it serviced as specified, which is a form of abuse.

Also, it sounds to me, based on Mr Toms’ description of events, it doesn't sound like he's trying to con me here - it sounds like a desperate appeal for assistance. On the balance of probability, I'm going to assume substantial truth here.

I am naming and shaming the dealership here because I think that's unconscionable to adopt that position. I think, on the balance of probability, that Mr Toms’ complaint sounds  reasonably genuine and substantially true. And if what you've said is fact, then the dealership is required to offer you a resolution that involves no cost to you, including this diagnosis.

It's shameful that a genuine Subaru outlet cannot diagnose a fault with a genuine Subaru transmission and it's ridiculous that it has to be shipped from Coffs Harbour all the way to Melbourne. That's absurd and for you to have to pay for that that's anti-consumer i just don't get it i don't get why it's got to go all the way to Melbourne is it what is there nobody in Sydney or Newcastle or somewhere closer no transmission specialist who could diagnose this and why doesn't Subaru seemingly train every dealership to diagnose every potential fault with every potential vehicle because every dealership sells every vehicle that just gobsmacks me.

Now as you know if you're a regular of this website, I have mad love for Subaru. I've owned four brand new Subarus and I love them every time. I drive something like a WRX or an STI, I love it - they're awesome cars. So what's at risk here, from behaviour like this, is my faith in the brand and others’ when they hear about how other customers are treated.

I don't know if the dealership is faithfully representing Subaru Australia's position on all of this, but if they are, that's appalling in my view because consumer law is not optional.

It should not be up to a consumer to get the gloves on and get into the ring with a far more powerful opponent and slog it out in consumer court when there's a clear-cut case, seemingly, of a failed seal in a differential that  has leaked the wrong oil into the CVT and essentially killed it, requiring its replacement.

This is obviously a design flaw that, in my estimation, is probably accountant-driven, because it is possible to put together a seal on a differential, between a diff and a CVT, that has lifelong integrity. I don't accept that they just fail sometimes; that's emblematic of underdone R&D. And if it is just a one-off, then the dealer should say ‘that's terrible, we're gonna look after it’, and Subaru should go, ‘here's your transmission, sorry for the inconvenience.’ End of story.

I'm going to call on Subaru Australia to get on the front foot here and just help out Mr Toms and, if this is not a faithful representation of the actual events and MR Toms is bullshitting me - and let's just acknowledge that as a possibility - then I will follow that up in my subsequent report.

I will faithfully put Subaru Australia's position to you as well, but as things stand with the  information at hand, I think this is pretty poor. This frown should go upside down at no cost to Mr Toms if this is a faithful representation of the facts.

Any other conduct here seems to me to be unconscionable and anti-consumer, for anybody who's put their funds on the line. They’re not just buying a new car, they’re saying that out of the countless different brands selling cars in Australia, they’ve chosen a Subaru and have put faith in your brand. 

This is a bilateral relationship for the term of ownership; the commitment is made by the consumer up-front and yet it appears to me that the response is anything but in-line with the intent of Australian Consumer Law.

I'm reporting what Mr Toms has said to me and that means Geoff King Motors and Subaru Australia are going to watch and they're going to be aware that 30,000 other Australians are going to watch as well. If they want to get back to me with their version of events and acknowledge, ‘Sorry, we dropped the ball on this - we're turning this frown upside down’, I'm happy to faithfully report that as well, if that's ultimately what happens.

What I'd like to know from you is, if you own a Subaru, have you had a problem like this, either with the CVT or a dealership? 

My take on this is that Subaru's CVTs are okay from a durability point of view, which means better than Nissan, not as good as Toyota.

The other point I'd make here, is that in other markets, like in North America for example, Subaru has had a CVT reliability problem and my understanding there is that they increased the warranty on the CVT to something like 10 years and whatever mileage, maybe 100,000 miles or something, whichever comes first (which is about 160,000 kilometres).

So, there's evidence in other markets that the brand has had a problem, but I'm not sure that Subaru's done any such thing here.

But they shouldn't have to anyway because of those provisions of acceptable quality and reasonable durability in consumer law.

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