Almost everyone I know has at least one Subaru. Skiers/climbers/etc are nuts for them. Some of the gang have modded cars (Forester XT is a fave, but we have a few WRX and STi owners in our cadre) and none of them have had any reliability problems.
One guy has a 2002 WRX that he's modded out to wazoo, and the little 2.0 seems unbreakable. His transmission, not so much. That's been the only weak point for him. He's running a 2005 trans now, no more problems.
The 2.5L turbos engines had some intial problems, but I hear that Subaru has rectified them.
Subaru leaves a LOT of horsepower on the table.