Fuel leak or fuel odor on the 2002 Subaru Impreza
1 fire 1 injury 2 of the 53 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
When fuel leak or fuel odor gets reported
Owners of the 2002 Subaru Impreza report fuel leak or fuel odor at a median of 62,500 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 37,500 miles and a quarter after 117,500 miles, from 39 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 90,000 miles. It is the 1st most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 27,500 miles at the tenth percentile to 135,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 108,460 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
21% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27,740 miles | 37,003 miles | 62,000 miles | 118,665 miles | 136,200 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 1 a fire and 1 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $300–$2,500 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 4 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2002, at a median of 62,500 miles, and latest on the 2003 at 105,000 miles.
By volume the 2002 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
On jan. 5, 2004 as I was driving my 2002 subaru wrx I could smell fuel coming in from the vents. I pulled over and popped the hood to get a very strong scent of fuel around the intake manifold. Subaru has issued a tsb on this, but why there is no recall is still bothersome to me. Leaking fuel in the engine compartment is not a good thing and this needs to be a recall. There have been several complaints from other wrx owners on this same issue.*ak
I have a 2002 subaru impreza wrx sedan which has an apparent fuel leak in cold weather. Subaru has a technical service bullitain out on this problem to fix it (they do know about it), but it has yet to be made a recall. I first experienced this problem the other night when it was very cold outside, and there was a very strong fuel odor in the cabin. I asked some of my friends who also drive wrx's if they have had experience with this, and they said that they have been having the problem recently as well. After doing some research, the tsb was discovered and the source became clear. Fuel was leaking onto the engine, which poses not only a foul odor, but also an extremely dangerous fire hazzard. Please get subaru to make this a recall so that they can prevent anything bad from happening to one of their customers. I doubt they would want their "subaru" name to become known as the "cars that catch on fire". Make this problem a recall as soon as possible so no lives are lost. Ak
Subaru of america has a technical service buliten about model year 2002 subaru impreza wrx's having a leaky fuel like where it enters the injectors. This bulliten is not covered if the car is out of warrenty. Yet the fuel leak is so bad that when the air conditioning is turned on there is a very strong fuel smell comin from the vents. I feel that this bulliten should be a recall and not a bulliten. This kind of problem causes a huge safety rick and if a car were to catch fire from the leaky fuel it could not only destroy the car but also hurt or kill the driver and passengers. *ak
Also reported on the 2002 Subaru Impreza
Other fuel system problem
Control arm, ball joint or bushing failure
ABS module or sensor failure
Other powertrain problem
Other visibility problem
Other engine problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 53 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does fuel leak or fuel odor happen on the 2002 Subaru Impreza?
Across 39 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 62,500 miles. A quarter were filed before 37,500 miles and a quarter after 117,500 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is fuel leak or fuel odor on the 2002 Subaru Impreza?
53 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 1.3 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed