ugh. This is what you get for being a Suburban commuter.

I think that the difficulty/cost is what concerned me most. Head gaskets fail on all types of cars, but usually it's not such an involved process to fix (from what I understand is the proper procedure). Good to know they seem to have it better under control.

While I don’t factor in depreciation much, we tend to keep our vehicles quite awhile. I don’t know if I’ve owned a vehicle that wasn’t 10+ yrs old when we moved on to a different one, and only one that was (barely) under 100k miles.

Good to know. Thanks for the insight.

That’s the thing that concern me most about Subarus. The head-gasket problem that (apparently) requires the engine to be removed to resolve properly when it goes. I’ve seen conflicting info on whether this is still a fairly common problem or not.

The only specification I need is the one that gets it in my driveway.

OH, MY GOD! They’re harvesting babies for their OIL now?!? I can’t decide if this is better or worse than pushing this powder of baby byproduct on us as a cure for sticky sand, or not. Where will the madness end?!

Why would someone want to make powder out of a baby? I’m going to boycott the beach until this stops!

I know, right?

This VW Beetle was able to gather some pretty good speed.

If I could buy a Skyactive-D Mazda 6 (or even Mazda 3) wagon, it would be so far atop my list of next new cars to buy that I’d have to be blown away by any other car’s price/value/capability for it not to be my eventual selection.

I feel like people are going to be directed to a lot of spots empty only because they’re actually in a non-parking zone like next to a fire hydrant/“active” driveway or to where older (non-connected) cars are parked.

Regarding the HPFP, I could only base my statement on what I’d seen written of the problem. Once I was no longer in the market, I stopped following the issue. At least, apparently, VW eventually recognized it as a problem and used a redesigned part.

Sing it, brother! I’m in the market for a good job (instead of the two meh-at-best jobs I have currently).

Addendum to my longer reply: whenever I see a car driving with one of its headlights out (regardless of vehicle age) I’m genuinely surprised when it’s NOT a VW.

I’ll take “Things that had their heyday in the ‘90’s” for $800, Alex!

Of course they’ve improved. Virtually all vehicles have. However, it remains to be seen if the matter of reliability has improved to the level of some of their competitors.

Actually, I’d love to get a TDI Golf or Sportwagen. It’s on my short list. Concerns about reliability (and budget) do give me pause, though.

I don’t doubt it. My impression has been that it was, loosely based on the Golf, but they went too far astray and the resulting higher costs (and higher price) made people see it as a poorer value than some of its competitors. For whatever reason, people seemed to think that the RAV4/CRV/etc represented a better value…