Consumer Complaints
| Fail date | miles | occurences | Purchase date |
|---|---|---|---|
| UNKNOWN OR OTHER | |||
| 02/21/2011 | 26000 | ||
| Road conditions: poor, icy. vehicle: 2009 subaru outback wagon loaded with 4 passengers (2 adult, 2 teen, plus light luggage). when the vehicle passed over an icy patch, the car swayed from side to side violently. on subaru forum websites, this type of loss of control is termed ghost walking which is an odd but accurate term for the feel of the situation. i have seen multiple entries on the owners' forum websites describing this phenomena, and it apparently affects several model years. my dealer offers to re-align the back tires which may fix the instability problem (which is attributed to load) but which will cause another problem: excessive tire wear. this is a dangerous situation. as subaru markets the car for the winter driving market, it needs to fix this dangerous design flaw before someone is killed over compensating for the system-driven fishtailing. please note: although subaru attributes this to loading of the vehicle, the car was not loaded beyond strictly normal use for a station wagon. this is as dangerous as sudden acceleration in toyota. | |||
| 12/22/2008 | 3700 | 1 | |
| I recently purchased a 2009 subaru outback 2.5 special edition. while driving on i-35 near cloquet, mn, the car exhibited dangerously unstable handling that has been described by other subaru outback owners. the road conditions were icy and even with greatly reduced speed the car would slide/drift sideways on straightaways. this was very unnerving as i could do nothing save reducing my speed to a crawl to avoid this drifting effect. at this point i was being passed by all other traffic on the highway (semis, fwd and rwd cars, etc.), which did not seem to have the handling issues i was having. the car is new (3700 miles) and i had just taken to a shop that morning for an oil change and everything checked out ok. i believe the outback has a dangerous handling issue that appears to manifest primarily when fully loaded (i had 2 passengers and gear) and on smooth and slippery roads. i am scared to drive this car in snowy conditions, which is unfortunate given i live in mn and bought this car for winter driving and its awd properties. i have never had a car handle so poorly in my 16 years of winter driving. *tr | |||