Scotty,
A friend of mine were thinking about a Subaru Impreza wagon, AWD, good New England vehicles especially living here in rhode Island, yes they are cheaper then a Toyota, a lot of room for a small wagon, and safe. Question here is if you baby one of those, and if the transmission is a weak point at all, what would you recommend to anybody that is getting one to do? The boxer motors, oil change is critical I do know that and I've seen some that actually go 300K miles. The newer ones are a CVT, the question here is how often in those do you have to change the CVT fluid? Who makes those transmissions?
Subaru makes their own CVT transmissions. They are better than the awful Jatco units used by Nissan but not as good as Toyota or Honda. If you don't abuse it you'd probably get about 150K miles out of it, maybe more if you regularly change the CVT fluid.
Problem is that Subaru in the U.S. considers the CVT to be a sealed unit and dealers typically won't want to change the fluid until 90K-100K miles. You can change the fluid yourself of course but the procedure is a little involved. (You can find it on youtube.)
I read that rather then doing rubber CVT belts now Subaru changed it to CVT chain, of course yes you should change the fluid, maybe they are getting better, yes I've heard Scotty saying they had rough start with CVT, maybe that'll be a big difference. I'm figuring like the timing chain in a motor that could last hundreds of thousands of miles.
As far as I know Subaru always used a steel chain in their CVTs. I could be wrong of course but the only automotive CVT I know of that used rubber belts was the DAF Variomatic.
I'd say you've got a good shot at getting a long service life if you change the fluid regularly and don't beat it to death.
Subaru says to "inspect" transmission fluid every 30k miles by a dealer.
All Subaru CVTs are made by Subaru, and all of their conventional automatics are made by Jatco.
You might get 100 120k miles out of one but not more, but if a proffesional rebuilds it at that mileage thats a quarter million miles out of it, not too bad.