Hi, has anyone compared these head to head? I like the idea that the Forester has an available manual transmission. The Mazda looks reliable and very fun to drive. The frontend/grille looks kinda stupid.
We’re in very rural northern Vermont with quite a few dirt roads, usually but not always pretty well maintained.
Car dealerships aren’t close by. The Subaru dealer is just under an hour drive, the Mazda/Volkswagen dealership just over an hour and a half each way. Locally we have Ford, GMC/Chevy, and Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge.
I’d probably buy new this time although I’ve had good luck buying ‘certified’ used cars off of leases, most recently a 2015 Audi A3 off of a 36-month lease cancelled after 24 I think? so pretty close to new - with manufacturer + dealer warranties; someone else having eaten the depreciation; low mileage, and full confidence that scheduled maintenance has been adhered to, prior to my taking ownership. Comfort and tech, of course reliability, and ease of third-party servicing and parts are all considerations for me.
Reasoned opinions very welcome; TIA for any thoughts at all. Buying is hard.
If you can get the stick, get the Forester in stick. Subaru’s only other transmission option these days is a CVT, and I still don’t trust the longevity and repairability of these. For instance, the owner’s manual states that the CVT transmission module, or whatever the heck they call it, cannot be serviced and does not require maintenance. Then page over to the maintenance section at the end of the manual and it demands that if you tow, drive in excessively hot or cold climates, or in dusty environments you will need to service and maintain the CVT “sooner” than the previously specified service schedule. Which is never, because it just said it can’t be repaired or serviced. Needless to say, this skeeves me out. I can at least wrench on a manual transmission myself, and it has the bonus side effect of preventing people from asking to borrow my car.
Me personally, I would avoid all Mazda products unless you specifically want a Miata as a project/track car. Everyone I’ve known with a recent Mazda has wound up with a pile of issues. Somehow their Ford lineage is still managing to show through. A Scoob will be much easier to work on yourself in my opinion, if that matters to you.
Full disclosure: Mine is a Subaru family. I own a manual Crosstrek after having previously owned a Manual Impreza. My wife has a new CVT Impreza so we’ll see how that goes, my father has an Outback, and my stepmother has a Forester. Dad’s Outback has the CVT and stepmom’s Forester is old enough (I believe the last model year) that it still has a conventional slushbox. No major issues with any of them over a couple of decades, and my folks are definitely completely lackadaisical in the vehicle service department. The newer FB engines in all of our cars except the old Forester are even chain timed, so that removes one major maintenance hassle right from the jump.
It occurs to me that my Crosstrek turned 10 years old last year. I’ve been beating the shit out of it this whole time, using it as an off-road camping toy and general purpose hauling tool. It’s been driven across the country twice. The paint ultimately got so beat up I recoated the entire thing in truck bed liner. I should have got it a cake.
Subaru no longer offers a manual in anything except the WRX and BRZ. They nuked manuals in the Forester in 2019 and its been gone from the impreza since 2023.They’ve completely abandoned any semblance of building fun cars anymore. OP would need to buy fairly used (and nobody with a recent manual wants to give it up, so good fucking luck)
The CVT’s don’t have too many issues these days aside from being useless fucking garbage. The mega failures they had from their introduction in 2010 to about 2018 have largely been solved, and if you’re an asshole you can usually force dealers to do the severe-service 60k trans fluid change so they’ll last longer. (Lifetime fluid is a scam.)
Their bigger issue is the CVT is useless, less than useless in adverse weather conditions. For context, my parents have a 2018 Forester. The awd works fine to a point, but traction control system is so overzealous about trying to protect the fragile CVT that it will completely BAN you from putting power down to the ground if it detects wheel slip. I’m talking foot on the floor, but its gutless and the engine is doing nothing. You can’t disable it fully, you can’t spin tires to chew your way through a snowbank, you’ll get a foot into a berm and then be completely dead in the water when my old stock forester would have crawled right over it with wheel spin for days. On flat gravel it’s ok but oh man does it feel terrible and gutless on a slope or in any kind of snow, and I don’t know that OP would have much fun with it in the northeast.
And it feels like actual ass to drive. It tries to fake shift like a normal automatic but with zero torque change. It’ll move the car fine but you don’t feel a thing in your butt dyno and it drives me nuts.
Subaru had cool stuff that was decent as long as you maintained it but that’s long gone. I have zero love for them now.
Agreed. You can pry mine from my cold, dead flippers. And maybe not even then.
If I ever grenade my engine, rest assured I’m sticking an electric powerplant in this puppy and keeping it moving. Stick shift and all.
One thing I do know for sure is that the all wheel drive system between the CVT and manual models, at least for my Crosstrek, is very different. The CVT is front wheel drive until it detects wheel slip at which point it may deign to send some power to the rear wheels, but with significant caveats attached as you have noted. The manual is a full time split 50/50 between front and rear, with limited slip (IIRC an electronic one in the front?) differentials between the left and right sides. This makes mine great fun to scrabble around sideways everywhere in the snow with the traction control turned off. If you start losing it you can pretty much just point the front wheels about 50% of the way towards the direction you want to go, drop it into 2nd, and mash it and it’ll claw itself back in that direction eventually.
I also have a set of mildly oversized studded snow tires for mine, just to be an asshole. With those you’re basically unstoppable, although what with one thing and another climate-wise I haven’t had much use for them in the last three winters or so.
I have a 2015 Mazda3 automatic that’s been pretty great for 252k miles. Full list of repairs beyond typical wear parts has been the rear camera and camera wiring, rear camera switch, infotainment screen (all under warranty btw), and the accelerator pedal.
It has also had about $5k of repairs from the wife hitting a curb at 55mph. One bunch of suspension parts and a new engine cradle later…
Still runs and drives like new.
I loved my Mazda 323, the early model then known as the Protege, of which Mazda made versions for both Mitsubishi and Chevrolet. A very successful and durable model in my opinion. And like @[email protected] I’m cynical about Subaru reliability. I know a couple different mechanics - around here where Subarus are totally ubiquitous - who curse them for being in their shops so repeatedly. But I do like AWD, if not CVT (having no experience with the latter).