Being a Toyota owner with a Yaris. I kind of expected this car to have the typical Toyota/Honda engine life.
I was in the market for an econo-car when clash for clunkers was going and bought a new '09 Yaris, been following this guy:
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/...le_cars/5.html
Basically just changed the oil with Walmart Synthetic every 4k miles and now he has a 400k mile engine with good compression. Its kind of expected with Toyota.
I'm not worried about the Azin gearbox at all, or the torsen rear diff.
But this car's engine is really Subaru. I don't have a lot of knowledge about Subaru as far as long term durability, I've heard it can be amazing with the natural balance of the horizontally opposed, but I also hear complaints of Subaru boxer engines in general with track racers. One track racing member here has reported already going through two engines.
I've wanted a lightweight rwd coupe for years so jumped on the FR-S last labor day breaking my rule to never buy a first year model . Mines been fine except for the CEL reflash, but I plan on keeping it I long time.
Researching Subaru boxers in general finding threads like these pop up:
http://www.trackhq.com/forums/f2/pro...08/index2.html
Googling I'm finding that hardcore track guys seem to have very mixed opinions on Subaru boxers.
On the other hand, we have a vendor here with over 400hp turbo on the stock long block which is encouraging. We have folks tuning the redline to 8k supposedly successfully.
Nothing public has been announced as far as quality tweaks/improvements for the 2014 which is Good.
We are at the one year mark now and should have some indication whether this boxer is going to be a bullet proof workhorse or a troublesome first year design.
Would like to hear opinions from others.