My current car is a 2011 Outback with the 3.6 liter six. A truly great engine with no history of head gasket failures.
Prior to this one, I had a 2000 Outback with the 3 liter six, and that engine is equally problem-free.
They are no more costly to maintain than any other mainstream AWD vehicle. The only additional maintenance cost is the vital need to rotate the tires on a consistent basis. If somebody doesn’t want that expense, they shouldn’t buy an AWD vehicle.
The 30k service’s are almost 600
Admittedly, it was several years ago, but I paid $480 for my 30k service at the dealership.
If you live´in New England, rust is a factor, a low mileage older model may be ready for the scrapyard soon because of structural rust.
By the way, I have lived in the Buffalo NY area all of my adult life. More then 60 years. I have never owned or wanted to own and 4 or all wheel drive.
Today s drivers seem to think all wheel drive is a substitute or learning how to drive in the winter. It is not. I cannot tell you how many abandoned 4 wheel drive cars and trucks I have had to weave my car or minivan or school bus around in blizzards.
All good advice. I hate looking for cars. Martin Luther (the original one in the 1500’s) said once to sin boldly. By that he meant you do your research and due diligence and then just do it and don’t look back. Maybe you just like the color or the dealer or the design. Whatever makes you feel good. The worst that could happen is you make a mistake and end up selling it again. I bought a 1960 piece of junk Morris Minor. Sold it after a couple months but never regretted it.
The last car we got was AWD. That’s all the dealer stocked. That was four years ago and being in Minnesota, I think there have been less than a half dozen times I really used it. I really wanted to try it out too but you need deep snow which doesn’t happen that often. Then of course on ice it really doesn’t help that much except to get started. But woe to you if your tires break loose. So I guess it’s nice to have but way over-rated for the times needed. I’ve got a can of hornet spray too but never used it this year.
What is the hornet spray to spray on the tires? When I was driving truck I carried a jug of bleach to pour on the drive tires when I was on ice and needed a little help to get rolling.
I would definitely remove Jeep off this list, as for the age and price range it is likely to be a can of worms… expensive ones…
+1
Myself, I would suggest to budget for a set of winter tires on a separate set of steel wheels for the winter and go with regular FWD - it will be much better and cheaper in the end than to buy AWD/4WD with mediocre tires and spend money on extra gas and drive-train repairs.
I could’ve used that spray. Best to just walk on by and not stir them up, though. Most sprays send them into a state of pissed off that’s best avoided. They go nuts and sting you anyway.
that looks like one big pile of… OUCH.
Years back I got some spray that you could use from 20 feet away trust me there is no way you can move fast enough even from 20 twenty feet away. 
Just referencing to something else I have besides AWD that I never use. My dad used to scare me though. He’d take a cane pole (for fishing) and wrap some cloth around it, soak it in gas and light it on fire. Then up on the ladder to burn the hornet’s nest at the roof peak. I think everyone did it that way back in the 50’s. I was afraid he’d start the house on fire. Did the job though. Can’t paint a house with hornets flying around.
A couple of years ago, I used that stuff–repeatedly–on a wasp nest in one of my trees. Over the space of a week or so, I did the spray a bit and then run away routine, and it worked. By the time that I cut that branch off of the tree, there was nothing remaining alive inside the nest.
My dad used to just throw gas on them. No need to light it, they drop faster than any spray.
The 20 ft spray works, I think. It’s just not real fast acting. Hence your necessity to run!
last year my mom had a large wasp nest about the size of a football by her house. I just took the hose from a distance and hit the nest with water. it melted away
I just used one can I don’t remember for sure but I think it was more expensive than the other kind I learned about the gas trick /Scrapyard-John mentioned and never bought another can of spray.
I think whatever was in it was a slow working poison plus something that got them po’d and hyper active with a homing device that settled on the one that was doing the spraying before the poison killed them.
The couple of times I’ve used the log distance spray, I didn’t have to move. If you do it at twilight, the wasps/hornets are all tucked in and not flying around.
Thank you!
I will bear that in mind the next time that I have to spray those buggers.
