My 2006 Honda CR-V and 2009 Subaru Outback: The Reliable Vs. The Unlucky One

2006 Honda CR-V EX

When I signed up to write about my “Cars Of A Lifetime” I outlined twelve posts describing twenty cars. This is my eleventh post, which means there’s only one more on its way. (Did I just hear a loud sigh of relief? I think someone forgot to mute their microphone.)

Writing about a half-century of car ownership has me reflect on all the changes I’ve seen over time. I believe the biggest change is that cars are more reliable now. I mean, most cars are more reliable, on average. There are exceptions, as we shall see.

In the beginning, I learned to drive in a 1960s Volvo which had a 6-digit odometer, unusual for its time, as no sensible person expected their car to go over 99,999 miles. The Volvo had a manual choke for its carburetor, and it started reliably only when I guessed correctly how far to pull out the choke knob. The arrival of the automatic choke in the ‘70s certainly was an improvement; however each car I drove liked different dance steps on the gas pedal when I wanted it to start on a cold winter morning. Carburetors also had idle mixture screws that you needed to adjust by ear if you didn’t have a tach/dwell meter and a vacuum gauge handy. What a relief when car makers adopted electronic fuel injection!

I remember that my 1970 VW had contact points in its distributor that needed adjustment too, and timing that was never quite right. Computerized electronic ignition was another leap forward. Better tires, suspensions that don’t need to be greased, more effective rust-proofing, 100,000-mile spark plugs, synthetic oil… I’m sure you can think of other advances that have led us to expect a longer, more enjoyable ownership experience.

The grab handle below the Honda’s dash-mounted shift lever is the emergency brake

An example of a particularly reliable car was the Honda CR-V we bought for my wife in 2006. Her friend had one she was happy with, and we were impressed by its spacious interior. In fact I’m convinced that our CR-V was bigger on the inside than the outside, defying all known laws of physics. My wife liked sitting up high with large windows all around.

If I used a photo of a black interior you’d need a flashlight to see anything

Our CR-V was silver with a black interior. A very black interior; we kept losing things. Eventually I replaced all the interior lights with extra-bright LED lamps.

We had our CR-V for fifteen years and 180,000 miles, which was record longevity for our household. Where was this exceedingly reliable car built? In England, of all places. Honda had a factory in Swindon, west of London, and only thirty miles east of the city where my wife and I met in the ‘70s. Any CR-V sold in the U.S. in 2006 was built either in Swindon or in Japan.

Our CR-V EX was not a base model. My wife wanted a sunroof, and as she’d been driving for ten years a minivan that did not have power windows, I was not about to repeat my mistake by being overly thrifty this time around. The minivan had been our first new car equipped with an automatic; the Honda which replaced it was our first car with a really good automatic, a 5-speed that always anticipated correctly the gear in which it needed to be.

Our CR-V was all-wheel-drive, with the front wheels doing most of the work and the rear wheels waking up only when necessary. A 16-valve 2.4L VTEC engine provided motivation that was sufficient.

Beneath the floor of the rear compartment was a picnic table with folding legs. We had exactly one picnic on this table, with our daughter and her then-boyfriend as our guests. We’d chosen a cemetery for our picnic spot; he married her anyway. Later I used our Honda to move another daughter 500 miles, with a mattress strapped to its roof.

The sharp edges of these stamped steel parts in our CR-V were permanently blood-stained

A minor but irritating problem with our CR-V was its headlamp bulbs with filaments that burned out regularly – I must have replaced a dozen or more. There were separate bulbs for high and low beams, and to replace one required me to release a metal clip that I could not see, inevitably with some loss of blood as I fumbled around blindly. I began to keep track of which bulbs I replaced, looking for a pattern, and my notes included whether the new bulb was made in Germany or China. No conclusions were reached.

Honda recalled our CR-V to replace its airbags, which had been made by Takata. A year later our car was recalled again, to replace the replacements I suppose. The only other significant problem I remember was that a door hinge broke. The car’s rear door opened sideways from the left, as it was designed for curbside use in Japan. Honda hung the spare tire on this door, which meant that two massive hinges were required, and one of these broke in half. (It was easy to replace.) Incidentally the rear window could be opened with a push of the key fob if we didn’t want to swing open the heavy door.

Subaru Outback

Speaking of heavy… with a heavy heart I shall now tell you about our other car, one which was not super reliable. In fairness to Subaru, I don’t think that my experience was typical. No, I believe that my 2009 Outback was uniquely in need of an exorcist.

At the time I bought the Outback, my job required me to drive from Bangor to Buffalo in all seasons, so I wanted the best all-wheel-drive implementation available, which at the time was Subaru’s. The year 2009 was the last for Legacies and Outbacks that were not too painful to look at, and because I purchased my car towards the end of the model year I had difficulty finding one in a color I liked.

Whoever thought frameless windows were a good idea did not live in the frozen North

My local dealer eventually found for me an all-black Outback. (Yes, I know that black is not a color.) The car had a PZEV label, which meant it met California emissions standards, although I don’t live in California. “PZEV” means “Partial Zero Emission Vehicle” and I’ve no idea what “partial zero” means. I mention my car’s PZEV-itivity only because I had a lot of trouble with its O2 sensors and catalytic converters over the years and I wonder if that was a cause.

2.5L four-cylinder engine

I liked my Outback when it wasn’t in the repair shop. It handled well and was fun to drive with its five-speed manual transmission. Sadly, I’d had it for less than two years when it got crunched in a low-speed accident on a snowy day. My wife was driving slowly uphill, about to turn onto our road, when our neighbor slid into the wrong lane through a stop sign into our Outback. Fortunately no one was hurt. The Subaru did what it was supposed to do, which was crumple to save its driver. The airbags did not need to deploy.

Did this accident contribute to the problems I had with this car later? I don’t know. I do know that my insurance company nearly declared my car totaled, but in the end a collision shop restored it to “good as new.”

I still have my repair records, and it seems the car was fairly reliable for the first six or seven years, other than trouble with the catalytic converter, which Subaru replaced under warranty. Then I see notations about frequent brake problems, another catalytic converter, the aforementioned O2 sensors, a new starter, wheel bearings, water pump, stabilizer bar links, a new clutch, coil packs, etc. etc.

2009 Subaru Outback interior

In the last week of 2020 we decided that our 15-year-old Honda CR-V was due for replacement, so I bought a RAV4 hybrid, the car my wife drives today. Why didn’t I trade in the unlucky Outback instead? It was only 11 years old, I’d just had some expensive repairs made, and I hoped to get a few more years use from it, as I didn’t want two new cars at once. Alas, a few months later the Outback’s timing belt snapped and the engine self-destructed. (I’d had the timing belt replaced on schedule 20,000 miles earlier.)

My mechanic quoted me a price for a remanufactured engine, and I did consider that option for a while, as the Outback was in good shape, except for the engine not working. Then I thought, what will I do if I spend thousands on a rebuilt engine, and the Check Engine Light comes on again, as it always does? I decided that enough was enough. I sold the Outback to my mechanic, who put in a new engine before he sold the car to his daughter’s boyfriend. Some months later I took another car to my mechanic and asked him about the Outback. He said, “The Check Engine Light comes on from time to time. My daughter’s kind of chippy about it.”

By the spring of 2021 my wife and I were both retired, so we didn’t desperately need two cars. Now without a car for the first time in fifty years, I shared my wife’s RAV4 while I thought about what to do. I’ll save the answer for the next and last installment of my “Cars Of A Lifetime” series, which will have the words “Ford Maverick” somewhere in the title.