My Favorite Ride: How the wheels came off my love for Subaru

In 2008, my friend Lynn Schwartzberg gave me her 1998 Subaru Legacy station wagon instead of donating it to charity after it was diagnosed with a serious engine issue.

She had bought the car new for $25,405 and driven it 284,762 miles. I had my mechanic look it over; the service ticket said, "Inspect vehicle for feasibility of driving."

He detected a “disturbing” sound deep in the engine, warning me not to invest too much money in repairs. He declared the Subaru “good to go” but with the caveat that the engine could blow any time.

Before that happened, though, and well after the odometer passed 300,000 miles, a tree fell across the front of the car during a storm. That was that.

Then I bought another one just like it but a year newer. Here’s the 2011 column about that troubled car.

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Note to readers: Think twice before buying a car that has run over a horse.

I should have known better, heeded the warning, when the former owner of my 1999 Subaru Outback Legacy gave a chuckle over the phone and said “You’re buying that car?”

I got the Nashville woman’s name from the car title and called to get a little history. A Carfax report, but from the owner directly. I had already decided to buy the Subaru; it was just like one I loved that had been smashed by a storm-felled tree.

The price was more than fair, and the ride was smooth. So that night on the phone, I heard what I wanted to hear, such as the phrase, “It was the best car we ever had.”

I discounted other things the woman said, such as, “We hit several deer with that car.” Hmm, several. “And there was that dead horse as well,” she added. “We called it the kamikaze car.”

For most people, any interest in purchasing would have ceased there. This car had run down animals and had the body work and new headlights to prove it. But I liked those crystal-clear headlight covers and was intrigued by the car-horse legacy.

And, a clarification: the Subaru in question hit a horse carcass. The car traveling ahead of it hit the horse first and actually killed it.

The bottom line here: since buying the car six months ago, it’s had some problems. Let’s just say I’ve spent as much for repairs as I paid for it.

Before the engine trouble, there was that cold night in January when the rear driver’s side tire nearly flew off. I had all four tires replaced the week before and had noticed a thumping sound for a few days in the back end somewhere.

Suddenly, driving down Weimer Road, the thumping sound grew quite loud. I pulled over and called AAA for a tow. Loading the car onto a trailer, the tow truck driver called me over. “You’ve gotta see this,” he said. The wheel was tilted inward, and there was not one lug nut in place. The tire place either forgot to replace them, did not tighten them, or someone was trying to kill me.

Surely not.

Then, in March, the engine pretty much blew. I was driving back from my ex-husband’s funeral when I noticed the needle on the temperature gauge was way up in the red. Next came a profusion of steam from under the hood, so much that when I pulled off the Ind. 45/46 Bypass, two passing motorists called 911 thinking the car was on fire.

Standing alongside the road in my best black dress, I knew a bad day had taken a bad turn. A sheriff’s deputy arrived, as did two fire trucks, one from Bloomington and the other from Ellettsville. And then, a tow truck from Chad’s; a different driver this time.

Turns out the motor overheated and cracked the engine block. Just like that. The repair would cost as much as installing a new engine. So my mechanic found me a used one out in California at a place called Engine World (I swear this is true), and I had it shipped to Bloomington.

Better put on a new timing belt now, he suggested. Then he called and said the radiator was corroded and leaking, and was the root cause of the overheating the day of the funeral. Great, I said; let’s get a new radiator while we’re at it. He ordered one, probably from Radiator World.

The car should have shined like gold when I picked it up, given my monetary investment.

Last week, I heard a grinding sound coming from the back while braking, metal on metal. Brakes, I said to myself. Rotors. Calipers. This repair was no surprise. Because when I bought the car, my mechanic (whom I did not relate the horse story to) said that for the price, the car was solid. “Just replace the back brakes soon,” he said.

So busy fixing everything else, I had forgotten.

Got a story to tell about a car or truck? Contact My Favorite Ride reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: My Favorite Ride: That time a free Subaru turned into an expensive one