2019 Subaru Forester: recalls, complaints and the safety record

Two federal datasets describe this model year and they answer different questions. Recall campaigns are manufacturer-acknowledged defects the maker must remedy at no charge — the 2019 Subaru Forester has 3. Complaints are unverified reports filed by owners, and NHTSA holds 831 of them here. Neither is a verdict on the car in a seller's driveway, but together they map where this generation needs attention.

Within those complaints, 35 reports describing a crash, 11 describing a fire, 20 reporting an injury. Those flags come from what the owner described when filing, not from a NHTSA investigation, and a single incident can generate several reports — but they are the entries worth reading in full before buying.

None of these repairs costs an owner anything, and none of them times out. What varies is whether a specific car falls inside the affected build range and whether a previous owner ever booked the work, which is what a VIN lookup settles.

NHTSA files every complaint under the component the owner blamed. For the 2019 Subaru Forester the 20 biggest categories carry most of the 831 reports, and that shape matters more than the total — evenly spread complaints read very differently from a third of owners describing one identical failure.

That concentration is the headline for this model year: visibility / wiper draws 45% of everything filed, which is the pattern of a specific weakness rather than ordinary wear reporting. Whatever the shape, complaints are what owners believed happened; the inspection list further down is how you test that against the actual car.

Complaint filings for the 2019 Subaru Forester peaked in 2020. Two different stories produce complaint peaks. One is a design or assembly fault that shows up almost immediately and gets absorbed by warranty repairs and recalls. The other is a component reaching the end of its service life, which arrives with mileage and lands on whoever owns the car at the time.

A 2019 Forester is at the age where deferred maintenance starts to separate well-kept examples from neglected ones, and the complaint pattern above tells you which systems to weigh.

Read against the rest of the run, this year sits among the heaviest-complaint years the nameplate has recorded. Not every Forester year reads the same way, and knowing which ones are worth stepping around is often the difference between two listings at the same price — see every Subaru Forester model year ranked.

Every complaint below carries the date the owner says the failure happened, and the gap between that date and the 2019model year is the age of the car when it broke. Read down the right-hand column: the systems that fail early were mostly somebody else’s warranty problem, and the ones that fail late are the bill waiting for whoever owns the car next.

On this car visibility / wiper and unknown or other showed up early enough that most reports fell inside the original warranty, so a well-kept example may already have had that work done — ask for the paperwork rather than assuming the problem is ahead of you. Engine is the latest-arriving of the group at a median of 4.4 years, which is the one to budget for on a car of this age.

NHTSA's New Car Assessment Program crash-tested this model year. The ratings describe how a tested configuration performed against standardized tests — a five-star car that has been through a collision and a bad repair is no longer the car that earned the stars.

The tested configuration above was the 2019 Subaru Forester SUV AWD. Driver-assistance equipment on this model year: forward collision warning came standard, and lane departure warning was standard.

Use the complaint pattern as a targeting tool. A SUV of this age needs the usual scrutiny regardless, but these specific items earned their place by recurring in the 2019 Subaru Forester's federal file — check them first, and price whatever turns up.

• Visibility / wiper — 370 owners filed about this; have a mechanic look here first
• Unknown or other — 144 owners filed about this; have a mechanic look here first
• Electrical system — 134 owners filed about this; have a mechanic look here first
• Recall completion — confirm by VIN that all 3 campaigns were actually repaired, not just mailed about
• Service history — a documented maintenance trail is worth more than the complaint count above
• Engine bay and wiring — fire reports exist for this model year, so inspect for heat damage and amateur electrical work

Nothing in the federal record covers ordinary SUV wear, so add these. They are the checks a mechanic makes on any SUV before worrying about what makes this one a 2019 Subaru Forester.

• All-wheel-drive engagement — transfer cases and couplings fail expensively and hide well on a short test drive
• Rear tailgate seals and the spare well — water pools here first and rots outward unnoticed
• Third-row and folding-seat mechanisms if fitted, plus the floor beneath them for damp
• Roof-rail and crossbar mounts — loads carried up high stress mounts that leak once disturbed

Each of these turns something on this page into a question the seller either answers confidently or does not.

• Were the 3 campaigns completed, and is there dealer paperwork for them?
• Has the visibility / wiper ever been repaired or replaced?
• Who has serviced it, and can I see the records?
• Has it been in a collision, and did insurance pay for the repair?
• Can I take it to my own mechanic before we agree a price?
• Is the title in your name and free of any lien?

Everything above describes the model year. The car in front of you has its own history: which of these 3 campaigns apply to its VIN range, whether those repairs were done, what its title record says, and what it was built with. That is a VIN question, and the decode is free.

A single vehicle’s recall count means little in isolation — what matters is how it compares with what else was on the lot. These are the closest matches on this site by body type and model year:

• 2018 Jeep Compass — 6 recalls, 931 complaints
• 2020 Hyundai Palisade — 5 recalls, 524 complaints
• 2017 Honda CR-V — 7 recalls, 1,752 complaints
• 2017 Hyundai Santa Fe — 7 recalls, 1,296 complaints