all vehicles · every Outback year · method

Subaru Outback 2008

Safety complaints filed by owners in the first three years, per 1,000 sold.

0.56 per 1,000

better than this nameplate’s own median · from 25 complaints filed in the first three years, of 226 ever. 95% lower bound 0.34.

Against its own model years

The model year carries far more information than the badge, so this is the comparison that matters.

Model year	Per 1,000	Complaints
2008	0.56	25
2009	0.30	15
2010	1.37	102
2011	1.15	113
2012	0.36	40
2013	0.75	88
2014	0.51	66
2015	1.51	220
2016	0.86	145
2017	1.03	192
2018	2.20	405
2019	3.07	553
2020	4.30	720
2021	1.46	225
2022	2.62	396
2023	0.52	81

What owners describe

Phrases over-represented in these complaints compared with the same component on every other vehicle. Counts are complaints containing the phrase.

Air Bags 104 complaints

console	18	18%
overhead	17	17%
map	10	10%

When it breaks

13% of reported failures happened before 30,000 miles (median 79,600 miles, from 160 complaints that recorded one).

Failures arrive late and spread out, which looks like wear. Service history matters more than model year here.

What NHTSA did

No NHTSA investigation covers this model year.

That is not a clean bill of health, and not a criticism of the agency: investigations open for many reasons and complaint volume is only one of them.

What owners and forums say

Not built yet. This panel is meant to carry community sentiment beside the filed-complaint data, so the two can be compared. Showing something weaker here would defeat its purpose.

Check this yourself

Example records behind this page:

10212354 · 10213195 · 10218009 · 10222714 · 10222730 · 10226372

Limits of this figure. It counts safety complaints filed with the federal government, which is a floor on failures and not a census: problems that only cost money are under-reported. Complaint rates also reflect how likely a brand’s owners are to file, which cannot be separated from how often the car fails. Sales are calendar-year and the denominator for this nameplate is verified against a published figure.