The 'Toyota'/'Honda' tax on used cars is real. I'd say Toyota is the main one who has earned it [0]

The 'Subaru' tax less so... [1]

Mazda is somewhat the exception here; a lot of their stuff is some branch of the Ford tech branch lineage, but they at least went down the path of 'not leaking coolant into cylinders' with their engine design.

But I digress.

It's an information problem because the owner may or may not know about engine/transmission/electrical[2] The the first two parts of that are -fairly- consistent across models... you'll see some cars that frequently sell at certain mileage points, and sometimes part of that is because savvy owners know that it's near a hard maintenance point (or common failure point.)

[0] - Shift Flare on Aisin(Toyota) transmissions is far less of a real problem than many Honda 5 speeds, for example.

[1] - I've found my Subaru, despite having a reputation for being 'touchy' was perfectly fine up to the point an oil change was borked. After that it's been a slow downhill.

[2] - These are the biggest 'money pits' in my experience, baring 'cooling system' issues that were actually engine design issues (looking at you, AMC I6 Grand Cherokee!)

Subaru and Mazda have both gone down the drain when it comes to corner cutting. Their entry level cars are nice to look at with the latest tech but the core driving experience has been compromised. Subaru fully embraced belt-type CVTs and Mazda switched from a double wishbone to a much cheaper torsion beam suspension. They are basically the automobile equivalent of the last 2 gens of pre-M1 Macbooks where all the innovation is in the cheap frivolous parts while the main CPU and graphics (engine, transmission, and suspension) languished. The 2024 Impreza after more than a decade has only seen a pathetic 15 horsepower increase compared to their 2008-2011 generation, this is untenable in the age of electric cars. Subaru and Mazda should have partnered together instead of joining Toyota. Their quality may be improving but they are losing the soul of their brands.

Subaru embraced belt type CVTs because they provide better mileage than an automatic. The CVTs do have issues (mostly around cooling, is my understanding) but Mileage/Emissions are already hard for them I'd imagine.

> untenable in the age of electric cars

Frankly, Subaru is in a tough spot with that. Most of Subaru's unique 'value prop' outside of JDM is that their overall design makes for a fairly cheap but effective AWD system. AFAICT there's no good 'translation' to that for an electric car.

Mazda... I'm of the opinion they probably suffered a bit from Ford divesting most/all of their interest in them. (OTOH, Ford has suffered a bit, the more Ford tries to 'improve' the otherwise very reliable Mazda 4Cyl designs the more problems they seem to have...)

Modern 8-speed+ automatics are competitive, especially if you throw in some hybrid technology. Toyota's eCVTs are best in class (Ford also arrived at the same solution by dint of convergent engineering). They are much better than belt type CVTs. Subaru is now a Toyota partner just like Mazda, they have access to all the engineering they could want. Subaru and Mazda used to be enthusiasts' favored brand, now they are just making same boring commuter cars as everyone else. The WRX engineering has been split off from the Impreza, and the Mazda 3 is evangelizing torsion beams and gating standard safety features behind higher trims in the age of multi link suspension and self driving.

At this rate I might as well get an AWD Prius. Terribly disappointed with Subaru. It's not like they are unaware of the problems, visit any Subaru forum/subreddit and the common complaints are very obvious.