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Subaru Impreza WRX

Transmission Failures

Subaru •WRX Transmission •Wheel Bearings •General Flimsiness

David of Dallas writes (3/13/03):
I own a 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX with a five-speed manual transmission. At my 30k service I changed the transmission oil and since then it has been hard to shift into first; I now have to come to a complete stop before downshifting into first gear. That is only slightly worse than the original design of the tranny which is somewhere around 7 m.p.h., and still not driveworthy -- a problem that has since been addressed in the '03 model with improved synchro gears.

If it is a problem that has been found and addressed in the later models, one would think that Subaru would stand behind the design defect and honor the warranty claims of indiviuals such as myself who have made a couple of minor engine mods that have NOTHING to do with the way the car shifts into first gear. My 40hp increase didn't make the car want to shift into first when it shouldn't, that was purely human error on my part. A fact that was verbally confirmed by Buzz Kelly, the service manager at Huffine's.

He agreed with me that my minor h.p. change had nothing to do with the synchro going out. It was, and still is, instinct on my part to be able to get into first gear when rolling to a stop and the light changes to green for example. All it does is grind until a slower speed is reached; complete stop now. Being a turbocharged car, it virtually stands still when trying to take off from second at anything less than 20 m.p.h. or so. That is a conceivable traffic hazard. For that reason alone, they should have put more thought into the design. But they didn't and here I am with a denied warranty claim.

I took the car in to Huffine's Subaru on Thursday March 6, 2003 and was denied a warranty claim the same day. I went through channels at the advice of Buzz Kelly (Subaru of America) and decided to leave the car for another day so the district manager for S.O.A. could have a look at it. After repeated phone calls on my part Friday the 7th and leaving several messages, I was informed that the denial stood and that the district manager had been involved from the beginning. To their credit, Huffine's didn't charge me a second day of rental car fee knowing that it was their fault for not informing me that going through channels would be a waste of time, due to the fact that the d.m. had already been involved in the decision (that's the reason for going through channels, by the way, to get the d.m. involved.)

I have been online and read many articles and it is pretty well established that the first generation tranny is poorly designed and definitely ill-suited for a turbocharged car. Sure, it can handle the power, in fact, the gears have been claimed to be able to withstand up to 350 h.p. But power is not the issue here. The issue is that S.O.A. is doing whatever they can to get out of standing behind a poorly designed transmission and consumers such as myself get the raw end of the deal.

Bryan of Columbus OH (3/11/03):
My 2002 Subaru WRX transmission went out with less than 50,000 miles on it. It was still under warranty. I took it to the dealer and they took it out, the 2 gear had completely worn off because it appears it hadn't been going in properly. They said it was abuse and wouldn't fix it. They even charged me $500 labor for just removing the transmission. They didn't even reinstall it. They said that they cannot rebuild it and a new transmission would cost me $4500.

Many other people are having transmission problems and Subaru has even reworked the transmission for 2003, but they are not taking care of this problem with their customers. This is really taking advantage of customers who buy a performance car that doesn't perform and if you tear something up the answer is “it's abuse” and they won't fix their poor design and quality problems.

I had to buy a transmission for $2000 and have it installed, of coarse I did not use the dealership who charged me $500 to just remove the original transmission. My car was sitting for 2 months while I took care of this. Again many people have this same problem and Subaru is refusing to admit there is a problem and the people have to fix it themselves. Th total cost to me was Nearly $3000 but this was much cheaper than the $4500 dealer quoted price.

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