2025 Subaru Legacy: what breaks, and at what mileage
What breaks on the 2025 Subaru Legacy
On the 2025 Subaru Legacy, the failure owners report most often is stalling while driving, with 4 reports on file. Across every failure mode on this year, half the dated reports were filed before 10,000 miles.
The failures owners actually file about
Owners have reported 7 named failure modes on the 2025 Subaru Legacy, and the three most-reported carry 60% of everything filed, so the trouble here is concentrated rather than scattered.
Stalling while driving leads with 4 reports and about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles.
CVT failure follows with 1 report.
Fuel pump failure follows with 1 report.
By system, the reports fall mostly into engine (5), fuel (2) and transmission (1).
When these failures get reported
Too few of the reports on this year carry an odometer reading to describe the timing: 1 of them do. The mileages quoted elsewhere on this page come from the modes that have enough of them.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
How reports accumulate
Every report with an odometer reading, cumulative, from 0 to 200,000 miles. A curve that climbs early is a car with early problems, whatever its total.
- Line share of reports filed by that mileage
How bad it is when it goes
Across the named modes, 1 an injury. Those are the words owners used in their own complaints, and NHTSA does not verify them, but they are the closest thing in this data to a measure of what a failure actually did.
The average severity weight across every report on this year is 5.90, where a stalled engine or a failed airbag weighs many times more than a rattling trim panel, and a figure this high means the reports are dominated by failures with safety consequences rather than annoyances. The weighting is set out in full on the methodology page.
What the top failures cost to put right, as editorial estimates for an independent US shop rather than figures from NHTSA: stalling while driving at $300–$2,500, CVT failure at $3,000–$8,500, fuel pump failure at $600–$2,600 and other engine problem at $300–$4,000. Dealer labour, a seized bolt or a part that is no longer made can push any of these past the top of its range.
60% of the reports on this year sit in the engine, transmission, drivetrain or cooling systems — the four where a repair bill is usually four figures, so more than half of what owners complained about here is expensive.
Every reported failure mode
| Failure mode | System | Reports | With reading | 25th | Median | 75th | Per 1,000 | Typical repair | Severity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stalling while driving | engine | 4 | 0 | — | — | — | 0.1 | $300–$2,500 | Critical |
| CVT failure | transmission | 1 | 0 | — | — | — | 0.0 | $3,000–$8,500 | Critical |
| Fuel pump failure | fuel | 1 | 0 | — | — | — | 0.0 | $600–$2,600 | High |
| Other engine problem | engine | 1 | 0 | — | — | — | 0.0 | $300–$4,000 | High |
| Other fuel system problem | fuel | 1 | 0 | — | — | — | 0.0 | $300–$2,200 | High |
| Other lighting problem | lighting | 1 | 0 | — | — | — | 0.0 | $120–$1,200 | Moderate |
| Other visibility problem | glass | 1 | 1 | — | 10k | — | 0.0 | $150–$1,400 | Moderate |
This year had no usable recall paperwork, so the fleet-size estimate is the median of other years of the same model. Repair costs are typical independent-shop ranges for the failure, not figures from these reports.
How often, against how many were built
Scaled by an estimate of how many of these cars exist, the 2025 Subaru Legacy draws about 0.4 per 1,000 vehicles, which puts it in the 71st percentile of complaint rates among 2025 vehicles we can rate.
That denominator is the weakest number on the page and it is fair to say so plainly. This year had no usable recall paperwork, so the fleet-size estimate is the median of other years of the same model.
The working figure is 27,440 vehicles. If the true number is twice that, every rate on this page is half what it says; the ranking against other 2025 vehicles, which is what the risk score uses, is far more robust than the rate itself.
Better and worse years of the same car
Across the 28 model years of this car that carry enough reports to score, 1996 comes out best at 60 and 2015 worst at 78.
Scores compare each year against other cars of the same model year, so a low number on an older car is a real result and not an artefact of age.
Shorter is better. Years with too few reports to score are shown without a bar rather than as a zero, because no data is not good news.
Where these figures stop being useful
10 owner reports; fleet size borrowed from other years of the same model. Every count on this page is therefore a floor: it is the number of owners who went to the trouble of filing with a federal agency, which is a small and self-selected fraction of the owners who had the fault.
Of those 10 reports, 1 carried an odometer reading, so the mileages here describe 10% of the sample rather than all of it. Owners also round: readings pile up on multiples of ten thousand, which is why this site publishes "about 90,000 miles" and not "91,438".
The failure modes are assigned by software reading the owner's own words, which is accurate in bulk and wrong in individual cases. A mode with a handful of reports may contain a misfiled one.
And nothing here predicts what one car will do. These are other people's complaints, filed years apart, on cars maintained by strangers. Read the page as a map of where this model year has previously gone wrong, then have the specific car in front of you inspected.
Questions this page answers
What are the most common problems with the 2025 Subaru Legacy?
The most-reported failures are stalling while driving (4 reports), cvt failure (1 report) and fuel pump failure (1 report). Counts come from owner complaints filed with NHTSA, which are voluntary, so they show what owners bothered to report rather than every fault that occurred.
Where this comes from. Every figure above is computed from NHTSA owner complaints and recall records for this exact make, model and year. Complaints are voluntary and self-selected, so treat counts as a floor. The methodology page writes out each formula, and the same numbers are available as JSON.
What breaks at my mileage Compare with another car
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