I am looking to by a car, either a Toyota, Honda or Subaru. Mostly Sabaru is right now, and l was curious as to how reliable Subaru is are - like the legacy is and outbacks.

How is the fuel economy range on Subaru's?

Does the transmission in an Automatic tend remain sturdy?

Also, any general repairs that may come along, are they a hefty price or more of a normal price range for the repairs?

ok this is gonna be tricky, honda is a really good car for reliability & gas milaege in this day & age where gas is $3 a gallon tht is one good thing. subaru is a very hefty brand nice cars nice model nice engines, but almost 87% of all subaru is have eith 4x4 or AWD which means it has a bigger engine & worse gas mileage now pricey yes, to repair the smallest thing like take this for example for a transmission for a subaru is $4,138, because it is all wheel drive, honda pending on wht model of honda u want has cheap parts, & even better options for people who would like some more ummphh. to their ride, pending on wht model u r interested in then honda would be ur best bet for money gas & parts, subaru would be ur choice for stock performance & sport looking, but honda can do this with very little money, if u have anything else u would like to kno or want more details i'm on messenger. u can find me there. have a good one hope this helped.

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l own an 03 automatic impreza wagon (125000 km). And its one of the best handling cars I've driven. I've been tracking my gas milage for a couple of years on excel & l get about 8.7 lit/100 km on the average. That is hwy & city.
l use Nokian AWR tires (35 psi). The recondmended 32 psi is for the fronts & 29 psi for the rear is too darn low. That is impossible to aquire good milage.

Repairs? Had to change both my front calipers as they were getting stuck front the winter salt carnage in Ontario. Not a problem since l move to BC. Other repairs like head gasket seal change was covered under the warranty ($3000/- fix l was told). So, nothing spend except on the new calipers which was a couple of hundreds.

l calculated the cost of operating the car over a year & it cost me 11 cents / km to own it. Our other 05 Honda civic cost 9 cents / km to own it. This calculation includes all the gas miliage & the maintenance cost/ repairs. Mind u the civic is still new. l love to calculate statistics on anything. :)

The automatic gate shifter is not bad. l used it to down shift all the time. It is not like the sport shifting type but u can mimick it. Put it in 1st gear & u will lock all 4 wheels for max traction - so l read somewhere.

We were looking to trade in the new civic for an older Subaru Forester because the civic was not exciting enough.

l ''WILL'' buy another Subaru after this Impreza. looking at the Outback or Forester.

Also, when we had those snowstorms in BC this year, l was the only one driving outhere. The civic was stuck in the driveway with one wheel spinning. The subie, did not even clear the driveway & it drove out over the 1 foot of snow.

Good luck in ur findings.

ST.

I've got a 97 Legacy Outback wagon with auto tranny, gets 22-27 mpg. They r excellent cars, both the manual & automatic transmissions r very durable (had a manual one before). This one currently has 210,000 miles with almost all original parts. The only problem with these r the 2.5 liter engine, from 96-03 they had much higher than usual head gasket failure. If u buy one with this engine, make sure it has the updated gaskets in it. And, as with any all wheel drive vehicle, if all the tires r not all the same size it will damage the drivetrain (so check for that). Timing belts should also be replaced every 100,000, but there is nothing on these cars that carry a higher than normal repair cost.