Disclaimer: I work for a Subaru competitor, any opinions are solely my own. 1. There are conditions where you cannot repair a vehicle and then sell it as a new

Disclaimer: I work for a Subaru competitor, any opinions are solely my own. 1. There are conditions where you cannot repair a vehicle and then sell it as a new vehicle (eg when you have to cut and weld). In these cases it's actually more cost effective to scrap it and rebuild it. Quite likely, most of the components of these vehicles will be used again on a vehicle with the same VIN. Scrap doesn't necessarily mean crush and recycle. 2. The weld process may only be certified on bare, unpainted sheet metal. After the paint process, basically none of the sheet metal is bare. Even the unpainted parts are coated with a pre-primer. Fun fact: sheet metal must be welded in the plant within a month of being stamped. (Aftersales consumer repairs are all manual work, so the same restriction doesn't apply) 3. As another commentor stated, even if Subaru had to eat the entire cost of production for these ~300, that is much better than a lawsuit. 300*50,000 = 15 million (probably more like 7-10 million). A single lawsuit could blow that away. 4. Cars are not really like airplanes. Airplanes have replaceable body components. Cars don't really have replaceable body components. A whole airframe for a large aircraft is probably worth millions. A welded auto body costs less than 5k in the manufacturing plant. A plane may take between a few days to a month to manufacture. A car plant makes hundreds to a thousand cars in a day.