First post folks.

I have been looking/ obsessing over a Forester STI for the last year or so and never pulled the trigger, maintenance and head gasket horror stories online, but I still want one as life’s too short, can any of you good people give some buying advice please?

Thanks

welcome, tbh you've picked up the biggest concerns, afraid its one of those that might or might not happen and not alot you can do about it. All 2.5's suffer from it sadly, even imports.

I did a fairly long (didnt plan too haha) reply to another thread and alot of it crosses over, while parts are slightly different the same principles are the same across all the subaru platforms.

Forester STI's are all imports don't forget.