2003 SUBARU OUTBACK — Complaint #537022
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL:SPRINGS filed May 27, 2005
NHTSA complaint #537022 (ODI reference 10122351) concerns a 2003 SUBARU OUTBACK and was filed on May 27, 2005. The owner reports the failure occurred on May 25, 2005. The vehicle had 70,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to New York based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as vehicle speed control:springs, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same SUBARU OUTBACK cohort independently describe similar vehicle speed control:springs failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2003 SUBARU OUTBACK shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
ACCELERATOR ON VEHICLE STUCK ON INTERSTATE HIGHWAY. TRIED TO PUT VEHICLE INTO NEUTRAL HOWEVER RPM'S SPUN TO 7000. HAD TO EVENTUALLY TURN CAR OFF IN DRIVE AFTER RIDING APPROXIMATELY 2 MILES WITH BOTH FEET ON BRAKE. DEALERSHIP UNABLE TO IDENTIFY ANY ISSUES, AND TOLD ME "IT'LL PROBABLY NOT HAPPEN AGAIN"
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 537022 |
| ODI Number | 10122351 |
| Date Filed | May 27, 2005 |
| Failure Date | May 25, 2005 |
| VIN | 4S3BH675937 |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.