I met many Germans-mechanics who reluctantly admitted that Japan builts
excellent motors: they may be less friendly in service, but accuracy in
machining and metal is outstanding.  ARK.

David Beierl wrote:

> Stuart, I have to take issue here -- I hasten to say that I'm a Toyota man
> myself, Westys excepted, but my family has owned five or so Subarus ('76
> and newer) with an aggregate total of well over a million miles on them.
> In general the engines have been the best feature of the car, needing
> little other than timing belts every 60k miles.  I've got a junk '85 GL
> sitting in my driveway right now.  It's got 220k miles on it, and it's
> uninspectable because the body structure is rotting aft of the front wheels
> (fixable, but not worth it).  But the motor is great, never had major
> mechanical service, never had head problems, pulls like a champ.  It has an
> oil leak that drips oil onto the exhaust header, which seems to be common
> with these motors.  Doesn't burn any, though.  It mostly belonged to my
> brother, who drove it fairly hard.  I started it the other day, after it
> had sat for six months or so, fired right up.  Total service costs on that
> car over its lifetime were, I think, under $2,500 including tires,
> batteries, exhaust.  My '84 Westy with 160k has had or is about to have
> close to $10,000 in engine and transmission work.  I love it dearly, but
> its maintenance requirements put it in the same class with Saab 96, Fiat
> 128, Plymouth Horizon in my book.  I got shut of those bad guys when I
> started buying Toyotas, and I wasn't best pleased to find that the Westy is
> another one. But getting back to the Subaru motor, word-of-mouth at the
> local garage is that the Subaru motors are usually good for 200k plus
> before they start having problems (the bodies are another story).  Does the
> Porsche do much better than that, and for anything like the same cost?
>
> david
>
> At 08:07 4/6/99 -0700, Stuart MacMillan wrote:
> >design, but not especially compact.  Subaru is prone to reliability
> >problems (their heads leak too!) and it is even more complex than the
> >waterboxer with its overhead cams.  Only Porsche has done it right, and
> David Beierl - dbeierl@ibm.net