Why would the dealer be so crooked, though?
It's money making warranty work for them.
Why cheat?
So, as a follow-up to this thread:
Yes, the dealer was absolutely attempting to not have to replace the short block.
They ran three (3!) oil consumption tests, and went so far are to overfill the engine with oil for ALL three tests!
We took pictures of the oil level each time it came back from the dealer, after letting the car sit overnight on a flat/level surface. Each time it had at least .47L of oil to much (~.5QTs).
We eventually determined that the car was burning oil at a rate of 1/3 a quart per 1000 miles.
Subaru eventually had to send in a field technician from their regional headquarters to look at the issue, and he indicated that it's common for dealers to overfill the oil. Furthermore, that this dealer in particular was not filling out the paperwork or tracking the initial level. As such, and after looking at all of our pictures, he made the determination that the car burned oil and instructed the dealer to replace the engine block assembly (aka "short block").
Interestingly, they still screw with the car when we take it to them: We recently brought the car in for something else, and it was .25 QTs low. (This was expected, as the car was still during the break-in phase for the new block. We had purposefully not filled the engine so that we could grab a sample and send it out for plasma spectroscopy.
They didn't top of ANY of the other fluids, but they poured in a QT of oil, overfilling the engine by .75QTs!
Seriously...
GB