Date:         Tue, 6 Apr 1999 11:43:58 -0400
Reply-To:     David Beierl <synergx@IBM.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
Comments:     RFC822 error: <W> MESSAGE-ID field duplicated. Last occurrence
              was retained.
From:         David Beierl <synergx@IBM.NET>
Subject:      Re: why did VW ditch the boxer motor?
Comments: To: Stuart MacMillan <stuart@COBALTGROUP.COM>
In-Reply-To:  <370A231C.EB4ABEB3@cobaltgroup.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Stuart, I have to take issue here -- I hasten to say that I'm a Toyota man
myself, Westys excepted, but my family has owned five or so Subarus ('76
and newer) with an aggregate total of well over a million miles on them.
In general the engines have been the best feature of the car, needing
little other than timing belts every 60k miles.  I've got a junk '85 GL
sitting in my driveway right now.  It's got 220k miles on it, and it's
uninspectable because the body structure is rotting aft of the front wheels
(fixable, but not worth it).  But the motor is great, never had major
mechanical service, never had head problems, pulls like a champ.  It has an
oil leak that drips oil onto the exhaust header, which seems to be common
with these motors.  Doesn't burn any, though.  It mostly belonged to my
brother, who drove it fairly hard.  I started it the other day, after it
had sat for six months or so, fired right up.  Total service costs on that
car over its lifetime were, I think, under $2,500 including tires,
batteries, exhaust.  My '84 Westy with 160k has had or is about to have
close to $10,000 in engine and transmission work.  I love it dearly, but
its maintenance requirements put it in the same class with Saab 96, Fiat
128, Plymouth Horizon in my book.  I got shut of those bad guys when I
started buying Toyotas, and I wasn't best pleased to find that the Westy is
another one. But getting back to the Subaru motor, word-of-mouth at the
local garage is that the Subaru motors are usually good for 200k plus
before they start having problems (the bodies are another story).  Does the
Porsche do much better than that, and for anything like the same cost?

david

At 08:07 4/6/99 -0700, Stuart MacMillan wrote:
>design, but not especially compact.  Subaru is prone to reliability
>problems (their heads leak too!) and it is even more complex than the
>waterboxer with its overhead cams.  Only Porsche has done it right, and
David Beierl - dbeierl@ibm.net