Every vehicle assembly plant I have been in has a place where the alignment is checked and adjusted.
Is every vehicle in spec? No.
Are the specs too wide? IMHO, Yes.
Will some of the specs cause tire wear issues - even if everything is perfect? Yes!!!
That means that it is possible for a brand new vehicle to experience what the OP is experiencing.
And while I don’t have alignment specs on a 2014 Subaru Forester, I’ll bet the specs aren’t conducive to good tire wear. Anyone have access to the specs?
It’s a 2015, sorry. Purchased in June 2014.
Both new car (Toyota and Mazda) I bought in the last 8 years had all the right dealer preparation done. The only things I had them do was to reset the door locks to manual; they come on automatic when you buy the car.
By contrast, in 1965 when I bought my first new car, a Dodge Dart, it came directly from the factory with Chrysler’s “Factory Pre-Service”. This amounted to little more than making sure the car was clean.
There were quite a number of things wrong, which the local dealer was supposed to fix.
- The front wheels were badly misaligned, resulting in rapid tire wear
- The light on the shift console did not work
- The floor carpet on the front passenger inside was not screwed down properly with edges sticking out
- The dash lights would not dim
- One seat belt would not retract properly
- The car was ordered with a jade green exterior and a black interior; instead it came out with a baby blue!! interior. It ended up repainted white at Chrysler’s cost.
Later, when talking to a friend who was a mechanic at a Dodge dealership, he told me that there was no post assembly line inspection at that time, except for very obvious errors and defects. The dealers then did little more than wash the cars and relied on the customer to bring the car back if he discovered any defects.