Subaru 2006 GT-B Wagon


This entry is part 2 of 19 in the series Subaru Legacy
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 [stextbox id=”info” shadow=”false”]We bought a new car. Well, its a newly (Japanese) imported 2nd hand car. It’s a black 2006 Subaru Legacy GT-B spec station wagon, bit like the old GT-B we had, but newer![/stextbox]

New Subaru Teething Problems

The new car is great, but I shall cut to the chase – there are a few wrinkles to iron out. These are niggles that I suppose a new car (owner) would not suffer. Anyhow,  as part of my new year’s resolution to be the 1% in 90-9-1 rule I will endeavour to note my failures and successes as I tick off each ‘issue’.

  1. Is it B-Spec? Could see it was GT in the dealership, you can see the turbos under the bonnet and its general demeanor compared to the non-turbos. Confirmation of the B-spec seems to a little more elusive. **DONE 31 Jan17 **
  2. No ‘aux-in’ for phone/ music device. 2006/7 was on the brink of the all-change of the iPhone et al.. The car has a MP3 hard-disk, minidisc (I know! Right!_) and a 6 CD changer. This would have been high-spec at the time, but now its kind of useless. **DONE 3 Feb 2016 **
  3. Dent (more a ding) in driver passenger door.
  4. Info/Set button on steering wheel doesn’t seem to work. **FIXED 02 Feb 17 **
  5. Everything in japanese on the centre console screen and dash.
  6. (One) cloudy headlight. **FIXED WITH TURTLE-WAX HEADLIGHT RESTORER KIT – Its magic **

A bit of background on our new car purchase

‘New’ or NEW? What to buy.

3-out-of-10 for Fun

We could have got brand new car for the price of our ‘new’ one, but a quick scan of the AA website would indicate that for a quite large number there are only two options  in-budget:
Car to ugly to show (or you are blind- if you are, just know, its ugly)

On the left, a 1.0L Suzuki Celerio GLX, around $16k, and on the right a 1.3L Chery J1 for 13k+. Didn’t really want a little car – but upon reflection I suppose these little cheap cars do make some sense, in the right context.


Sloppy Seconds

We could have bought a myriad of second hand cars…we nearly (so nearly) bought this one:

The Hilux Surf that could have been. It had done just under 400,000km. The moon is around 375,000km away. We would have bought it from a guy on his way back from moon.

It might have been fun, for a bit, in the sort of way a tractor is probably fun for a bit. After 5 minutes it stops being fun and actually becomes quite a nauseating, lurching and loud experience.


Choice Supportive Bias

It turns out people like to offer advice on buying cars. Most of the time the advice was not asked for – it kind of creeps up on you in conversation, like house-prices. We have been car-less since well before christmas and in the interim I have been told to buy a few Mazdas, a few Toyotas, a number of Fords…the list goes on.

I have been told to buy European.

I have been told to NOT buy European.

I can make one overlying observation on (nearly wholly unsolicited) car buying advice: The person giving the advice recommends the car they own. Which makes sense, they would not have bought it otherwise…and now they have invested in it, making one of their biggest life-purchases, and they champion it. Of course this is a fallacy: all cars cannot be the ‘best car’, and cars (Yes, I am sorry, even Toyotas) break and need maintenance.

Turns out this is called Choice Supportive Bias.


Ode to the Departed

The new wagon is a replacement for our beloved 1997 subaru legacy GT-B, which died in Awakino Gorge. RIP.

The car currently resides ‘somewhere’ in New Plymouth after being towed there.

Cause of death: con-rod went through the wall of the engine.

I really liked that car.

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