Total Complaints
3 filings
Subaru Subaru · model year
3 NHTSA complaints. A VIN lookup is required to determine whether a specific vehicle has an unrepaired recall.
NHTSA overall rating
Not crash-tested
New Car Assessment Program
The verdict
The 1999 Subaru Subaru posts below-average complaint volume among its own model-year siblings.
The 1999SubaruSubaru carries 3 consumer safety complaints in NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation database for this specific model-year cohort. Within that volume, owners reported 0 crashes, 0 fires, 0 injuries, and 0 fatalities. No NCAP 5-star crash-test rating is available for this model year in the federal database.
The most frequently selected component label in reports for the 1999 Subaru is power train:automatic transmission with 1 filings, followed by power train:manual transmission (1) and service brakes, hydraulic:foundation components (1). Complaint categories reflect owner reports and intake categorization; they do not establish a defect pattern or cause.
NHTSA currently has 9 investigation files overlapping the 1999 Subaru. Owners comparing this cohort against neighboring years should read the complaint-by-year trend as report volume, not a causal diagnosis. Use the related-complaint feed and the official recall lookup when researching a specific vehicle.
PlainCars' own composite of NHTSA NCAP crash-test ratings and rollover-risk assessment, each dimension normalized against the federal scale or the full national model-year corpus. Not an official NHTSA figure, and not a substitute for a specific vehicle's VIN-level recall check.
Total Complaints
3 filings
Crashes Reported
0 reports
Source
NHTSA ODI
Federal complaints database
At or below the fleet median complaint volume.
| Component | Count |
|---|---|
| POWER TRAIN:AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION | 1 |
| POWER TRAIN:MANUAL TRANSMISSION | 1 |
| SERVICE BRAKES, HYDRAULIC:FOUNDATION COMPONENTS | 1 |
WHILE DRIVING AT STATE SPEED LIMIT APPLIED BRAKES AND BRAKES FAILED. CONSUMER WAS ABLE TO PREVENT ACCIDENTS.*AK
DESIGN OF TRANSMISSION CAUSES IT TO CONSTANTLY DOWNSHIFT WHENEVER FOOT IS TAKEN OFF THE ACCELERATOR OR TAPS THE BRAKE (SLOPE CONTROL FEATURE). NLM
THE DESIGN OF THE TRANSMISSION CONTAINS "SLOPE CONTROL UNIT", WHICH ALLOWS FOR VEHICLE TO DOWNSHIFT WHEN RELEASING FOOT FROM ACCELERATOR PEDAL, DIFFICULT AND DISTRACTING TO DRIVER. MJS
Data vintage: August 2026. Sources: NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) complaints database, NHTSA recall campaign API, NHTSA NCAP crash-test ratings, and NHTSA FARS for fatality cross-reference.
Every figure on PlainCars is rendered directly from NHTSA complaint and safety data, no number is typed in by an editor. This year-specific record is rendered from NHTSA ODI, recall, and NCAP rows for the 1999 Subaru Subaru; no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of August 2026.
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.