AtWhatMileage
Glass · 1 owner report

Other visibility problem on the 2003 Subaru Legacy

Only 1 report for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 1
With an odometer reading 1
Reports per 1,000 built 0.0 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 100%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $150–$1,400
What it means when it happens Moderate
Rank among this year's problems 24th

When other visibility problem gets reported

There are 1 report of other visibility problem on the 2003 Subaru Legacy, 1 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 75,000 miles. It is the 24th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 1 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 20,000 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

Putting it right typically runs $150–$1,400 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.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 12 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2021, at a median of 1,100 miles, and latest on the 2000 at 225,000 miles.

By volume the 2020 carries the most reports, with 48; the 2003 has 0. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

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.

Median
  1. 1996 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  2. 1997 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  3. 1998 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  4. 1999 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  5. 2000 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 225k
  6. 2001 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  7. 2002 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  8. 2003 (this one) 20k
  9. 2005 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 76k
  10. 2007 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  11. 2008 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 70k
  12. 2009 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 62k
  13. 2010 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 67k
  14. 2011 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 118k
  15. 2012 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 52k
  16. 2014 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 22k
  17. 2015 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 9k
  18. 2016 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 24k
  19. 2017 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 36k
  20. 2018 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 29k
  21. 2019 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 6k
  22. 2020 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 5k
  23. 2021 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 1k
  24. 2022 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  25. 2024 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  26. 2025 Subaru Legacy other visibility problem 10k

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.

Windshield has a crack that starts on the passenger edge midway up the windshield and goes in toward the center toward the rearview mirror. Normally I would just think this was due to a rock chip, however I have seen multiple vehicles (same year/model) with the exact same crack.*ak

20,000 miles NHTSA complaint 501446 filed 2004-10-13

Also reported on the 2003 Subaru Legacy

Airbag inflator rupture

8 reports median 164k

Fuel leak or fuel odor

7 reports median 145k

Other engine problem

6 reports median 40k

Other wheel or tire problem

5 reports median 107k

Head gasket failure

4 reports median 77k

Other powertrain problem

4 reports median 13k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 1 report is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 1 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 other visibility problem happen on the 2003 Subaru Legacy?

Across 1 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 20,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is other visibility problem on the 2003 Subaru Legacy?

1 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 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