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One Subaru engine was the common culprit with a high frequency of blown head gaskets and that was the EJ25. The earlier EJ22 on the other hand was extremely durable and extremely rarely blew a head gasket. The blown head gasket on a EJ25 was most serious on the DOHC versions of the engine basically the late 90s Subarus, those leaked coolant internally and caused serious problems. Later EJ25s were SOHC and the big change here is when the head gasket blew on these, the coolant leak was external and no longer catastrophic as it was previously. Subaru has revised this head gasket a few times, thus far EJ25s with the new revised head gaskets appear to operate fine for the moment.
Our FA20 is quite a lot different from the EJ family and our FA is a lot closer to the Subaru FB engines. A change on the FB engines over the EJ is that they don't have coolant passing through the head gasket, an attempt to further reduce the chance of oil and coolant mixing. So the same issues with blown head gaskets of the past will at the minimum not affect the newer Subarus in the same way. Any engine however can blow a head gasket, you just hope its when the car is finally done after several years of service.
That said Prodrive has made a Subaru engine without head gaskets. If it can be mass produced who knows, Subaru might actually build that instead and at that point the head gasket problem is unquestionably over.
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