Short summary: This dealership acts fraudulently to cover - Shahrokh
Short summary: This dealership acts fraudulently to cover up known issues with their vehicles before sales. This is not a baseless claim, they perform it on several levels in sneaky ways which are strictly illegal, and are involving in an ongoing OMVIC investigation. Buyer Beware!
I purchased a 2016 Subaru Outback from this dealership on July 6. Prior to the sale, I did a thorough inspection + test drive of the car and didn’t notice any major issues or warnings lights on the dashboard. However, the day after, the dealership dropped off the car to my mechanic to get the car certified and after the short test drive by the mechanic, a warning light popped up and the mechanic read the error code to see it was P0971, which indicates that the CVT valve body is defective and should be replaced.
Once I notified them of this code, the dealership’s repair shop confirmed that the error codes on the car were cleared prior to the sale. This explains why it was not seen on my test drive, as the car needs to go through multiple drive cycles for errors to repropagate. This makes it impossible even for an observant buyer to see any warnings lights on the car when they are inspecting it.
I was fully aware that I am buying the vehicle As-Is and there is no expectation or guarantees on issues after the sale, hence I initially offered to split the repair costs with them, but they refused.
The issue is not that an issue popped up shortly after the sale which I would have no recourse over given it was sold As-Is, the issue is that they knowingly covered up and did not disclose the issue prior to the sale. By OMVIC mandatory disclosure laws, and by O.Reg.332/08, s.5; O.Reg.220/09, s. 1. of the Ontario Motor Vehicle Dealers Act, mechanical issues must be disclosed prior to a sale.
This alone was against the law, however my later investigation revealed that they engaged in more scandalous behaviour.
The car was sold to me with a Carfax (also part of ad listing) that was dated May 27 2026, with the last record done at Willowdale Subaru in February. The salesman even showed me the complete service history from internal Subaru records, making it seem like they are transparent. A newer Carfax I pulled showed that the vehicle passed safety and was certified on May 28, a day after the Carfax report that was attached to the ad. MTO certifications last 36 days, which meant this would have expired on July 3. The car was put up for sale just after it was expired on July 5, not coincidentally, but to avoid a buyer from discovering the issues and claiming a false certification by the dealership.
Why would the dealership not just sell the car certified to increase its resale value? The last record on the new Carfax I pulled showed that the dealership did extensive work on the car on June 25 (just 1 week before I purchased it) which crucially included a valve body replacement. This is the nail in the coffin that shows the dealership not only knew about this exact problem of the error code I saw, but attempted to fix it (unsuccessfully), hence they did not disclose any of those repairs to me.
It’s still unclear why the valve body is problematic, unless they falsified the service record for this car, which moves them to a whole other level of illicit activity. Neither scenario looks good for them, either the valve body was replaced and it did not fix the issue which they did not disclose (illegal), or they didn’t even replace the valve body but put it on the service history to act as an excuse to clear the transmission module error codes (also illegal).
With the facts of the case presented, it stands that this dealership acts not just in morally unjust ways, but in several illegal ways. They operate under the guise of legitimacy being an official Subaru dealership and provide buyers a false sense of security.
I strongly urge anyone to avoid doing business with them, but if you must, do not trust the recent service records they show and pull the Carfax.
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