AtWhatMileage
Adas · 5 owner reports

Other speed control problem on the 2007 Subaru Outback

Only 4 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 5
With an odometer reading 4
Reports per 1,000 built 0.2 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 25%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $250–$2,000
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 14th

When other speed control problem gets reported

There are 5 reports of other speed control problem on the 2007 Subaru Outback, 4 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 78,000 miles. It is the 14th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 4 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 89,750 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 $250–$2,000 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 25 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2022, at a median of 700 miles, and latest on the 1997 at 120,000 miles.

By volume the 2006 carries the most reports, with 38; the 2007 has 5. 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 Outback other speed control problem 186k
  2. 1997 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 120k
  3. 1998 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 72k
  4. 1999 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 73k
  5. 2000 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 54k
  6. 2001 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 40k
  7. 2002 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 45k
  8. 2003 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 29k
  9. 2004 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 79k
  10. 2005 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 90k
  11. 2006 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 102k
  12. 2007 (this one) 90k
  13. 2008 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 19k
  14. 2009 Subaru Outback other speed control problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  15. 2010 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 54k
  16. 2011 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 41k
  17. 2012 Subaru Outback other speed control problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  18. 2013 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 10k
  19. 2014 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 19k
  20. 2015 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 34k
  21. 2016 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 3k
  22. 2017 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 19k
  23. 2018 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 6k
  24. 2019 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 12k
  25. 2020 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 1k
  26. 2021 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 16k
  27. 2022 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 700
  28. 2023 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 13k
  29. 2024 Subaru Outback other speed control problem 1k
  30. 2025 Subaru Outback other speed control problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  31. 2026 Subaru Outback other speed control problem
    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

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

'07 subaru outback 2.5i w/ automatic transmission. When transmission was cool code p0720 was set for vehicle speed sensor failure. After driving for a while error would reset as sensor presumably warmed and began working normally. I identified and confirmed the front vehicle speed sensor was the problem. A week after the initial failure, and prior to my being able to replace the sensor, the behavior of the failure changed: at highway speed (60-65mph) the car would automatically shift into first gear and feel like the brakes were slammed on. This being an obviously dangerous and scary situation, my short term solution was to cut the wire going to the sensor until I could replace it. (the sensor is hard-wired into a 3-sensor wire harness that requires access inside the transmission to be replaced). Just prior to the car automatically shifting into first gear I also heard the safety solenoid in the shifter assembly (the one that prevents the operator from putting the shifter into park while the car is moving) quickly cycling on and off, so my assumption was that a partial signal was being seen by the onboard computer and interpreted…

76,000 miles NHTSA complaint 865521 filed 2011-07-06

Also reported on the 2007 Subaru Outback

Cruise control failure

15 reports median 90k

Airbag failed to deploy in a crash

11 reports median 83k

Other suspension problem

11 reports median 78k

Airbag inflator rupture

10 reports median 95k

Other electrical problem

10 reports median 104k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 5 reports 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 5 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 speed control problem happen on the 2007 Subaru Outback?

Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 90,000 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 speed control problem on the 2007 Subaru Outback?

5 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.2 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