Used Subaru Outback and Forester: oil consumption, then Starlink, then a clean run

Subaru sells one basic car in several bodies — a flat-four engine, all-wheel drive, a continuously variable transmission — and the Outback and Forester are the two most people buy used. Because they share so much, their records on this site move together. There are two clusters of years to be careful with. Everything else scores well.

2011 to 2015: the FB25 engine and its oil

Subaru replaced its long-running EJ25 engine, which had a well-known head-gasket weakness through the 2000s, with the FB25 for 2011 in the Forester and 2013 in the Outback. The new engine did not have the head-gasket problem. It did consume oil — a quart every thousand to two thousand miles on a proportion of engines, from new — because of a piston-ring design that Subaru revised in production during 2014 and 2015. A class action covering 2011 to 2015 Foresters and 2013 to 2014 Outbacks (and the Impreza, Crosstrek and Legacy of the same years) was settled in 2016 with an extended warranty on the affected engines and a free oil-consumption test at dealers. The complaint counts for these years are moderate rather than severe — the 2014 Forester scores 84, the 2015 car 66 — because an engine that drinks oil is an annoyance rather than a failure, as long as the owner keeps it topped up.

2016 to 2018: the good years

The 2016 to 2018 Outback and Forester are the sweet spot. The piston rings had been revised, the EyeSight driver-assistance system was mature, and the infotainment was the older, simpler unit. The Outback scores 74, 57 and 60 for those years and the Forester 76, 65 and 63 — solid rather than exceptional, held back mostly by a rear-hatch and windscreen-cracking complaints that appear across the range in this period. Subaru windscreens crack from small stone impacts at a rate owners find remarkable; it has been the subject of litigation and it appears on nearly every Subaru page on this site.

2019 to 2020: the fifth-generation Forester and sixth-generation Outback

The Forester was redesigned for 2019 and the Outback for 2020, both on Subaru's new global platform with a new Starlink infotainment system, a new electrical architecture, and on the Outback a 2.4-litre turbo option. The Forester's 2019 complaint count rose to 831 and its score fell to 41; the Outback's 2019 and 2020 years carry 1,032 and 896 complaints with scores of 41 and 35. The leading complaint by far is the Starlink screen — freezing, rebooting, going black, losing the reversing camera — followed by a battery that drains overnight (Subaru extended the battery warranty and revised the software controlling the data-communication module) and the EyeSight system braking for no reason. The windscreen complaints continue.

2021 onward

Subaru updated the Starlink software and the battery-management software in 2021, and the record turns immediately. The 2021 Outback scores 78, the 2023 car 89 and the 2024 car 93; the Forester scores 83 in 2021 and 90 in 2022 and 2023. These are, on the current record, among the best-scoring mainstream crossovers on the site. The 2025 Forester redesign shows a modest launch-year bump.

What to check

On a 2011 to 2015 car: the oil level and the service history, and whether the dealer oil-consumption test was done and what it found. On a 2019 to 2020 car: the Starlink software version (a dealer can tell you whether the update campaigns are complete), the battery's date, and the windscreen for chips and cracks. On any Subaru: the CVT fluid — Subaru calls it lifetime, and it is not, and a change every 60,000 miles is the difference between a transmission that lasts and one that does not.

Summary

Buy: 2016 to 2018, and 2021 onward. Acceptable: 2013 to 2015 with an oil-consumption test on file. Avoid: 2019 to 2020 unless the software campaigns are documented as complete.