Pulscar analysis of NHTSA public data, September 2026 Subaru Forester: what 5,216 owner complaints, 37 recall campaigns and ten Subaru warranty extensions say Licensed CC BY 4.0. Queries run 19 September 2026. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOURCE FILES -------------------------------------------------------------------------- NHTSA ODI complaint flat files COMPLAINTS_RECEIVED_2015-2019, _2020-2024, _2025-2026 https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/cmpl/ (field dictionary: CMPL.txt) 777,040 distinct vehicle complaints (ODINO, product type V) received 1 January 2015 to 8 September 2026. Of those, 5,216 name MAKE = SUBARU and MODEL = FORESTER, and 4,404 of those carry a model year of 2014 or later. SCOPE NOTE: the flat file treats each body style and drivetrain variant as its own model. FORESTER HYBRID is a separate model row and is NOT in the 5,216. Where the article discusses the 2026 Forester Hybrid it says so and uses recall documents, not these counts. NHTSA recall flat file FLAT_RCL.zip. NHTSA manufacturer communication flat files TSBS_RECEIVED_2015-2019, _2020-2024, _2025-2026 https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/tsbs/ (field dictionary: TSBS.txt) 1,519 distinct manufacturer communications name the Forester. NHTSA investigation flat file FLAT_INV.zip. Ten Subaru service bulletins were downloaded as PDFs from static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/ and read in full; they are listed below with their document URLs and are also in subaru-warranty-extensions.csv. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CASE SENSITIVITY -- READ THIS BEFORE REPRODUCING ANY COUNT -------------------------------------------------------------------------- NHTSA changed how it stores complaint narratives during 2021. Narratives received through 2020 are entirely upper case; those received from late 2021 onward are mixed case. EVERY query below is case-insensitive. A regex written in upper case and matched case-sensitively returns a plausible number that silently drops almost everything filed after mid-2021 -- which on this vehicle would have cut the windshield subset roughly in half, because 344 of its complaints were filed from 2022 onward. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- COMPONENT COUNTS -------------------------------------------------------------------------- NHTSA's COMPONENTS field holds one or more component names separated by " | ". A complaint counts once for each distinct component family it names, so family counts sum to more than 5,216. VISIBILITY / VISIBILITY-WIPER 1,214 rows (23.3%) AIR BAGS 815 UNKNOWN OR OTHER 790 ENGINE 742 ELECTRICAL SYSTEM 729 POWER TRAIN 383 VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL 337 SUSPENSION 304 FUEL/PROPULSION SYSTEM 291 FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 249 SERVICE BRAKES 231 This is the manufacturer-neutral field NHTSA assigns; it is not the owner's wording. The windshield subset below is built from narrative text, not from this field, and is slightly larger than the component count. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- MILEAGE AND RATE FIELDS -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mileage: NHTSA's MILES field, rows with 0 < miles < 400,000 only. All Forester complaints: 2,806 of 5,216 report a usable mileage. Median 30,325; first quartile 9,000; third quartile 67,830. 54.2% at or under 36,000 miles. Model year 2014 and later: 2,255 usable mileages, median 21,000, 65.3% at or under 36,000. Windshield subset: 786 usable mileages, median 10,000, first quartile 3,989, third quartile 23,049, 87.0% at or under 36,000. All-complaint baseline (whole 777,040-row file): 392,935 usable mileages, median 70,000. Towed / crash / fire: NHTSA's TOWED, CRASH and FIRE flags, share = Y. All Forester: towed 6.21%, crash 7.27%, fire 1.48%, 212 injuries, 2 deaths. Windshield subset: towed 0.39%, crash 0.08%, fire 0.08%. All-complaint baseline: towed 5.11%, crash 4.37%, fire 1.82%. The Forester crash share is above baseline because 776 complaints use air-bag, Takata or inflator language and those are usually filed after a crash or by an owner told to expect one. It is NOT a statement about how often this vehicle crashes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE WINDSHIELD SUBSET (1,268) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Membership, case-insensitive, full narrative: (windshield|windscreen)[^.]{0,120}(crack|chip|shatter|break|broke) OR (crack|chip|shatter)[^.]{0,120}(windshield|windscreen) FALSE-POSITIVE READING. Thirty matches were drawn at random (seed 42) and read in full. Twenty-nine describe a cracked or chipped front windshield. One (ODI 11473331) describes a dislodged windshield seal rather than a crack -- still a windshield complaint, but not the failure the subset is named for. Measured false-positive rate 1 in 30, about 3%. The looser query "windshield OR windscreen anywhere" returns 1,372 and was rejected because it picks up wiper, washer and defroster complaints. Phrase shares inside the subset: names a rock, pebble, stone, gravel or debris ......... 405 (31.9%) strict no-impact language (no apparent cause / no rock / spontaneous / nothing hit / no point of impact) ... 325 (25.6%) parked, garage, driveway, stationary or overnight ..... 367 (28.9%) repeat-replacement language .......................... 265 (20.9%) EyeSight or recalibration ............................ 119 (9.4%) insurance or deductible .............................. 100 (7.9%) class action ......................................... 58 (4.6%) a warranty extension, or bulletin 12-257 ............... 5 (0.4%) Safelite named ........................................ 33 (2.6%) THE NO-IMPACT SHARE IS NOT A CAUSE. It counts how many owners wrote that they saw no impact. An owner can miss a stone strike, and a crack can propagate days later from a chip nobody noticed. What the share does show is that a quarter of these owners went to the trouble of telling the federal government there was nothing to hit -- and that 31.9% named a rock in the same file, so the two descriptions coexist. Owner-reported dollar figures: every $N in the subset with 50 <= N <= 10,000. 91 figures. Median $1,000, first quartile $500, third quartile $1,300, largest $4,000. THIS IS NOT A PRICE: owners who write a number are the ones who paid one. By model year: 2015 = 21, 2016 = 20, 2017 = 125, 2018 = 165, 2019 = 437, 2020 = 336, 2021 = 94, 2022 = 27, 2023 = 14, 2024 = 8, 2025 = 9. As a share of each model year's own complaints: 2016 4.9%, 2017 21.4%, 2018 33.5%, 2019 52.5%, 2020 56.2%, 2021 45.4%, 2022 27.8%. By year received: 2019 = 195, 2020 = 381, 2021 = 325, 2022 = 179, 2023 = 83, 2024 = 49, 2025 = 18, 2026 = 15. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE SUBSETS THAT ARE SMALL, AND WHY THAT IS A FINDING -------------------------------------------------------------------------- transmission or CVT word anywhere .................... 203 (3.9%) CVT or transmission plus a shudder, judder, slip, hesitation, jerk, whine, surge or lurch word ....... 16 (0.3%) oil consumption language ............................. 111 (2.1%) head gasket ........................................... 41 (0.8%) air conditioning condenser ............................ 14 (0.3%) fuel pump ............................................. 30 (0.6%) Sixteen is a handful of owners, not a rate, and it is published as such. It does not mean Forester CVTs do not fail; it means that over eleven years very few owners filed a federal defect complaint about one. Subaru extended the CVT warranty to ten years or 100,000 miles on every Forester model year from 2014 to 2020 anyway, and its own bulletins say the extension is "not in response to any specific condition." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- RECALLS -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 distinct campaigns name the Subaru Forester in the eleven-year file. Populations are published once per campaign and are NOT Forester numbers: NHTSA lists one population per campaign across every make and model in it. No per-model split exists. The largest single campaign naming the Forester is 19V-149 (brake light switch, 1,303,530 vehicles, 2014-2016). Movement of complaint counts around a campaign is descriptive only. A recall changes the count for at least three reasons that cannot be separated here: the remedy works, owners stop filing because the problem is now official, and publicity briefly makes owners file more. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- DOCUMENTS READ IN FULL (PDF) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16-107-17 CVT Warranty Extension, 21 June 2017 (MC-10117538-9999) 16-115-18 CVT Warranty Extension, 6 September 2018 (MC-10146475-9999) 16-117-18 CVT Warranty Extension, 9 October 2018 (MC-10150931-9999) 16-155-25R CVT Warranty Extension, 1 May 2025, revised 24 April 2026 (MC-11032037-0001) 12-257-25R Windshield Warranty Extension / Inspection, 6 February 2025, revised 24 March 2025 (MC-11016218-0001) 15-317-24R Data Communication Module Warranty Extension, 27 February 2024, revised 30 January 2025 (MC-11013550-0001) 07-207-22R Subaru Battery Drain Product Liability Litigation, 18 August 2022, revised 27 November 2023 (MC-10246143-0001) 09-129-24R Fuel Pump Impeller Warranty Extension, 24 September 2024 (MC-11013494-0001) 15-269-20R A/C Condenser Warranty Extension, 17 August 2020, revised 4 September 2020 (MC-10180684-0001) 07-235-25 EyeSight Warranty Extension, 29 July 2025, revised 30 September 2025 (MC-11023536-0001) Every applicability line, term and exclusion quoted in the article comes from these PDFs, not from NHTSA's summary field. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- INVESTIGATIONS -------------------------------------------------------------------------- PE11-011 opened 7 Apr 2011, closed 23 Sep 2011, front suspension lower control arm failure PE19-009 opened 6 Aug 2019, closed 22 Jan 2020, Occupant Detection System failure -- the action behind campaign 19V-701 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LIMITATIONS -- READ BEFORE QUOTING ANY NUMBER -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Complaints are self-reported, unverified and voluntary. They are not failure rates and cannot be turned into one, because NHTSA publishes no denominator. 2. Counts follow attention. A recall with a mailed letter produces complaints; a quiet wear item does not. A class action does the same: the windshield cluster peaks in the years the litigation was public. 3. The complaint file records no engine code, no transmission type and no trim. Every engine-specific or CVT-specific statement in the article rests on a bulletin, not on these counts. 4. Mileage, towed, crash and fire are the owner's own entries. 5. Model year in the complaint file is the owner's entry and is sometimes wrong. 6. Coverage is decided by VIN and in-service date, never by model year alone. The status column in subaru-warranty-extensions.csv is our reading of the document's own terms as of September 2026, not a statement about any particular car. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- FILES -------------------------------------------------------------------------- complaints-by-model-year.csv model_year, forester_complaints, windshield_crack_complaints, windshield_pct_of_model_year, mileages_reported, median_miles. windshield-complaints-by-year.csv year_complaint_received, windshield_crack_complaints, all_forester_complaints, pct. subaru-warranty-extensions.csv bulletin, date_issued, component, forester_applicability, original_term, extended_term, status_september_2026, document. recall-campaigns.csv campaign, report_date, component, potentially_affected_whole_campaign, forester_model_years, consequence. subset-sizes.csv subset, complaints, pct_of_5216. No personal data is published: no VIN, no city, no dealer name, no owner free text beyond short quoted snippets in the article itself.