Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamber
You’re right, my previous statement of Subaru being an entity to make a customer whole is definitely not a given and nor to be expected, that was indeed wishful thinking on my part haha. I agree that there is of course a significant chance of being shafted by either brand, and dealers are not your friend nor an entity to expect much from to begin with. Nonetheless, from the extremely small anecdotal sample size I’ve seen of people posting their experiences of engine related failures online between the two GR86 forums, I’m lead to subjectively believe that I have an overall better chance of achieving a positive outcome from a Subaru of America than Toyota of America if I were to experience engine failure on a daily driver due to RTV bullshit or other manufacture / design issues.
Funnily enough, there is a gentleman on the other forum who has a BRZ and for some inexplicable reason chose to do seven track days on the same fill of OEM 0w-20 oil without changing it; unsurprisingly, his engine failed. Shockingly, Subaru of America decided to cover it out of good will, despite the track use and oil blunder being disclosed. This is of course a lonely sample size of but one. However, compare that to Toyota of Japan and Toyota of America outright denying claims without investigation, citing “track use” as the reason, when they laughably PROVIDE a free track day to each customer, and outright trying to fuck people over by digging through their social medias to find evidence of track or drift usage to deny claims while refusing to send a regional technician out to examine the failure - it becomes clear that one brand may have a more supportive attitude than the other. I understand that a couple of the Toyota denials that were posted about online recently may have been in fact have been perfectly reasonable due to user error or miss-use being involved in the reason for failure - this still pales in stark contrast to the couple feel-good experiences I’ve read about Subaru recently; the one listed above, among others.
I’m actually starting to warm up to the BRZ bumper, however even if not, I’d rather buy a BRZ and get a GR front bumper for it than roll the dice with Toyota even if price and availability between the two were to be exactly the same, which they are not. In fact, the mandatory “magic nano snake oil” paint protection package that I would be forced to buy with the car at seemingly every Toyota dealership would cover the cost of a bumper, AND I’d have a spare BRZ OEM bumper to boot! Looking at it through that lens, since I’m not a fan of the red interior stitching on the BRZ, I could put a few thousand towards aftermarket seats instead of burning that cash on a Toyota dealership’s mark up. Anyway, apologies for the rant, I digress…
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Don’t know about the other forum but here there are two North America reports one was covered and Inez was not so Toyota stands with a 50% accepted rate.
Dealers are not inherently evil and most of the time will work with people. Part of the issue is that they do indeed get a lot of warranty claims on cars that have been heavily modded or abused so some get a bit gun shy.
There is also that great internet deception of only hearing the horror stories while the good news ones remain silent. Could be a hundred dealers replace engines no questions asked and never know it while the five that weren’t are yelling and screaming all over different sites making it look like a massive issue. That was certainly the case with the recall debacle where when the real data was pulled together the denied repairs were only a small percentage.
I personally would never pay markup anyway. Every person that does validates the practice and just makes it worse.