all vehicles · every Outback year · method

Subaru Outback 2011

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

1.15 per 1,000

1.0 times this nameplate’s own median · from 113 complaints filed in the first three years, of 651 ever. 95% lower bound 0.94.

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.

Power Train 216 complaints

torque	104	48%
converter	101	47%
torque converter	98	45%
stalls	60	28%
stalling	44	21%
coming stop	36	17%

Exterior Lighting 117 complaints

burn out	21	18%
burn	21	18%
headlight bulbs	18	16%

Engine 85 complaints

torque converter	22	26%
torque	22	26%
converter	22	26%

When it breaks

21% of reported failures happened before 30,000 miles (median 85,000 miles, from 462 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:

10344700 · 10348019 · 10349635 · 10349662 · 10351374 · 10352407

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.