I mostly deal with old gen, 87-93 Loyales / GLs.  Have begun searching for a newer Forester for my wife.  I have heard about an ll bean Forester.   

 

Can anyone help explain what the difference is between one of those and a "regular" one, assuming the same year, etc.?

 

 

Leather seats, alloy wheels, two tone paint.

 

Cars101.com has more details. Look in the Archive section about halfway down the list on the left side.

Good grief.  Sooo many variations. 

We just want a reliable basic car.   Don't want frilly expensive stuff that just adds cost, like leather seats, alloy wheels, crazy tire sizes, fancy stereos, etcetera.

 

Is Forester the models we should be looking at?  If not, what?  Has Subaru completely abandoned the reliable and affordable market and gone all luxury? 

My 2000 Outback Sport has power windows, power locks, power mirrors, and cruise. That's it.

 

The only thing with Subarus is checking for head gasket problems and, depending on the year and engine, possibly making sure they were already done.

how new? They got a timing chain in 2012 I think.

Trying to find something rust free. $10 to $15,000.00. Timing belts I can do, no problem. I'd rather avoid headgaskets, mostly due to time. I've heard some variations of the engines are more reliable than others with the head gaskets. Don't need any more power than the equivalent power to weight ratio of a 3 speed auto loyale.

I think you should be looking at around a 2000-2004 model depending on where you live.  There were only 2 variants then, the L and the LS.  I had an L (base model) and it was quite nice.  In 1999,  the Forester went to the 2.5 SOHC engine, but since that was the first year, they were a bit problematic.  In '05, things started getting complicated. 

 

Unfortunately, the the EJ25 SOHC, eventually everyone has to do the head gaskets.  So, go older and use the money you save on either a new engine or a head gasket job.

 

Emily

I'm in CT. Wow, we paid something like 12k for our 2001 forester about 10 years ago. The real reason I need to do something is it rusted around the rear wheels. Kind of too far to fix easily, I think. Which sucks. Body work is far from my favorite thing to do.