AtWhatMileage
Transmission · 1 owner report

CVT failure on the 2017 Subaru Legacy

Only 0 reports 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 0
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 0%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $3,000–$8,500
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 22nd

When cvt failure gets reported

There are 1 report of CVT failure on the 2017 Subaru Legacy. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

It is the 22nd most-reported problem on this model year.

None of these reports included an odometer reading, so there is no mileage distribution to show. NHTSA's form does not require the field.

What happens, and what it costs

Putting it right typically runs $3,000–$8,500 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 6 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2015, at a median of 20 miles, and latest on the 2013 at 130,000 miles.

By volume the 2010 carries the most reports, with 25; the 2017 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. 2010 Subaru Legacy cvt failure 110k
  2. 2011 Subaru Legacy cvt failure 96k
  3. 2012 Subaru Legacy cvt failure 93k
  4. 2013 Subaru Legacy cvt failure 131k
  5. 2014 Subaru Legacy cvt failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  6. 2015 Subaru Legacy cvt failure 20
  7. 2016 Subaru Legacy cvt failure 2k
  8. 2017 (this one)
    no odometer readings given
    —
  9. 2020 Subaru Legacy cvt failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  10. 2025 Subaru Legacy cvt failure
    no odometer readings given
    —

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

Also reported on the 2017 Subaru Legacy

Other visibility problem

22 reports median 36k

Other electrical problem

19 reports median 61k

Windshield cracking

13 reports median 32k

Other steering problem

6 reports median 11k

Other wheel or tire problem

5 reports median 6k

Other driver assistance problem

5 reports median 45k

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.

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