2025 Subaru Forester: What to check before buying

At highway speeds, the driver side mirror shakes enough to blur the reflection, which makes lane changes hard and is worse at night with headlights behind. Dealers can reproduce it, but replacement mirrors don't fix it, parts are back-ordered, and some dealers say nothing can be done. A separate pattern involves glass. Windshields develop dings and cracks with no impact at about 4,000 miles, and liftgate glass explodes when a door is shut with the car off at about 5,700 miles.

Windshields crack easily. Minor chips spread into spider cracks, and some cracks start at the bottom edge with no impact. OEM replacement windshields are back-ordered for weeks with no firm date, and service advisors warn that a cracked windshield can affect EyeSight. The rear window also shatters on its own while parked. Other reports describe the driver side mirror vibrating at 55 mph and above, and the intermittent wiper speeding up on its own at about 1,000 miles.

Low beams throw a flat, low cutoff with total darkness above it, so hazards on hills and dark rural roads stay hidden. Owners also see shadows and dark spots on the road, some of which bounce as the car moves. Rain makes it worse. Dealers say the lights are level and working as designed. One adjustment brought little improvement and drew flashes from oncoming drivers. Owners describe the car as unsafe for night driving, though none of these reports involves a crash.

EyeSight brakes hard with no real threat. One trigger is construction barrels in the next lane on a curve, which creates a risk of being rear-ended. One owner reports three such events in 24,000 miles. The system also shuts off in cold weather, heavy rain, or when the windshield fogs, and dealers call that working as designed. Owners also get false keep-hands-on-wheel warnings while holding the wheel. One crash report describes the car lurching forward into a building while parking.

Only two reports, both serious. In one, the car does not stop when the brake pedal is pressed. It hits a garage, the driver is hurt, and the car is a total loss. No warning lights came on beforehand. In the other, the rubber pad on top of the brake pedal comes loose before 1k miles and gets in the way of braking, so the driver must press with full weight to stop. Neither report gives a cause.

Both reports involve injuries. A seat heater turns on by itself on a hot day and burns the occupant, and the dealer cannot duplicate the fault. On a Hybrid, the hatch and doors open on their own, including while parked and in a car wash, and they must be slammed to latch. That same owner reports reverse automatic braking stopping the car abruptly with nothing behind it, which threw the driver's head into the headrest.

In a reported T-bone crash into the front driver side, no airbags deploy even though the front end is destroyed. A second report involves the passenger seat sensor. It keeps the front passenger airbag off for a petite adult under roughly 100 pounds. The dealer says this is how the system is designed to work, which leaves the owner unsure whether a light passenger is protected.

The car accelerates on its own while parking with the brake pressed and hits a building. It then speeds backward at about 20 mph after reverse is selected, before stopping short of a tree. The airbags did not deploy, and no one was hurt. A second report describes the right paddle shifter sometimes commanding a downshift instead of an upshift during quick manual shifts.