The 2009 Subaru Impreza has 12 recalls, the most serious being a well-documented passenger frontal airbag inflator defect where the inflator can explode and send metal fragments into the cabin, causing serious injury or death.
Multiple recalls cover this same airbag inflator issue across various filings, but they all describe the same danger to front-seat occupants. This vehicle is only affected if it has a turbocharged engine for one of the other significant concerns: a relay controlling the secondary air injection pump can fail, causing the pump to run continuously, overheat, and melt in a way that raises the risk of an engine fire. On the electrical side, if a replacement ignition switch was ever installed, a small internal spring can break and weaken the switch, allowing the engine to shut off unexpectedly while driving and leaving the airbags potentially unable to deploy in a crash. Rounding out the list, the brake light switch can fail to illuminate the brake lights reliably, leaving drivers behind the vehicle without warning that it is slowing down.