I just had to replace the passenger seat hydraulic system to the tune of $ 2000, luckily Subaru paid for 1000 of it. Now the park brake light has been randomly flashing on and off and wont engage now. I see online it is a $1000 fix. My car horn has gone out also at the same time, I feel like I am being thousand dollars to death right now. I am disappointing because I bought my Outback because of the service reputation on the vehicles. I am just not going to fix the park brake but will have to fix the horn!

Most days of the week, I drive to the train station with my kids to pick up my wife. It was 100F out, typical Texas afternoon around 6pm. I did what I always do, I pressed the button for the electronic parking brake, heard it grind into position, then turned the car off rather than idle it since the train would be arriving in just a few minutes. When we go to leave, I start the car as I always do, buckle up and then I notice the dash display is as shown in the picture, complete with flashing brake light and eyesight systems disabled. I pull up on the electronic parking brake release but nothing happens. I try to put the car in gear and go, but we are not moving anywhere. I remembered when I bought the car, the salesman mentioned a tool for manually overriding the parking brake motor, that he said he was sure we would never need. Well, it looked like we would need it after all. I dug out the tool, climbed under the car (it was really hot and my kids were wondering why we were still there) and started turning the tool. One turn, two turns, three turns - crack! The cheap plastic handle snapped in two in my hand. Hey, what did I expect for almost $40K anyway? Back to the car to read the owner's manual some more, tried turning the car off then back on, same thing. We were stuck. So we called road side assistance and a friend to come retrieve my family while I waited 2 hours for the tow truck to arrive. The car was dropped off at the dealer at 8:30 that night with an explanation of what happened given to a sales manager (the service department was long closed). The next day they call to tell me they can't find anything wrong with the system (sound familiar?), that clearly I had caused the malfunction (I hadn't) and oh, by the way, we ran into your car while it was here on the lot, but don't worry we'll fix it up as good as new (they didn't). The problem didn't occur again for several more weeks, but then we were stranded again in the middle of nowhere Texas with the same problem. Set the parking brake, turn off the car, the family visits the restroom, come out, turn on car, parking brake won't release. This time we knew it would be hours to get a tow and we were far from home, so we waited about an hour at the air conditioned rest area and then were able to get the brake to release. From then on, until we recently traded in the piece of junk, I used a block of wood as our parking brake. The problem began to occur daily, but never when first turned on in the morning. I had an independent shop read the error codes and one of the codes listed was "excessive parking brake usage". This was not true, so it appears that the code can be generated even if there is a malfunction in the EPB actuator assembly, which after a search of the web, I found this to be a common problem with Subaru electronic parking brakes. It should be covered under warranty and should have been replaced the first time we had it towed to the dealer, but because of this convenient wording of the error code, it is just easier for them to blame to driver for the problem and send them on their way, to be stranded for another day. That is why we are soobie owners no more. So if you have the problem shown in the picture, you can go to YouTube and search for 2013 Subaru Legacy - Brake Issue and you will see the same problem we had effecting other owners.