[Dan]

Long boring story follows...

My sister-in-law's 2003 Maxima developed a small oil leak which eventually put the car in limp mode since there wasn't enough oil to operate, uhh, something up top. Variable timing or some crap. And by 'eventually', I mean it only took a week or so since it had a recent oil change. Couldn't find any drops in the driveway but my brother eventually narrowed it to something related to, or very near, the oil pan.

"Can we borrow one of your cars?"

Sure. Here's the Legacy. Enjoy. Keep it under 120, k? They're looking at cars right now so I figure it would give them a chance to sample at least one Subaru.

They had it a couple weeks (real busy with family stuff, cold weather, short daylight hours, etc., made it hard to find time to work on it).

Thursday evening my brother called and asked, "Still interested in selling the car?" Not really. Why? "Weeelll, a deer hit her when she was driving back from <town xyz>." Hit her? Not the other way around? "Yeah." Oh, so she's probably just fine, then. "Yeah." I started laughing a bit. I mean, what can you do? She's okay, the car is generally fine (deep scratch), but the timing just gave me the giggles: her having a really crappy week (was pretty sick a few days previous), them looking for a car anyway, crash-free until they borrow our car, that sort of thing. "I'll let you tell your wife about her car." Gee, thanks.

His wife says, "I like it but it doesn't have much power." True... but there's always the Legacy GT. And it handles quite nicely in the hills around here. We're kinda-sorta trying to get her back into driving a stick and she said she likes it. Might get a small victory there.

Anyway, they say it's only a matter of time before you hit a deer up here so we're hoping that this qualifies for us even though we weren't driving. :biggrin:

 

[The Sage]

I was in the back seat of a car that hit an elk in Northern Arizona outside Flagstaff. Everyone was OK, but the car had a lot of damaged. It felt like we hit a brick wall.

 

[the_webers_inc]

I wish my deer encounters were that minor. So far I've been deer-free with the Forester. Knock on wood.

An 03 Saturn VUE that I had prior seemed to be a deer magnet however. 4 deer hits in 4 years. One incident involved 2 deer - I hit one & the other ran into the rear driver side quarter panel. Plastic body panels shatter quite spectacularly when pushed too far.

Here's to hoping you can keep the Outback & Forester deer-free!

 

[Dan]

Here's a photo of the "damage":

I can't even see a crease along that 12-15" scuff / scrape. If you gotta have a deer encounter with your car, this is the way to go. Honestly, I wish local drivers did less damage with their doors than this deer did.



So the poor car is gonna have a horrible CarFax or AutoCheck. It's had, I think, five minor body-only incidents: a couple scuff-and-scoot parking lot encounters, hail damage about three months back, in a fit of Subris Marcy planted it in a snowbank on an off-ramp (lower fascia replaced) three or four years ago, and now this. After we get this taken care of, I oughta pull one of the history reports to get a laugh.

 

[nycredneck]

Glad that everyone is OK, some folks don't fare to well in deer collisions to say nothing of the car.

 

[stiXTer]

Yeah, I dread the first encounter... been in SW Colorado for 24 years and have been very lucky. Last night I drove through a notorious "deer alley" and chose to follow someone else about 100 yards back. If you're in the lead, it requires a constant side to side scan for critters. They just come out of nowhere. Closest call was an elk just ambling onto the road, not a care in the world. Missed him by a hair.

 

[Chilidawg]

I firmly believe that the whitetail deer is one of the most dangerous animals out there if you factor injuries and property damage into the equation. I hate 'em.