My buddy has an '06-'07 Legacy Outback 2.5 turbo and was greeted yesterday with a rather unexpected issue. It has 36,500 miles and is babied and always serviced @ Subaru at exactly the service intervals in the book so I know it's not lack of maintenance on his part. Anyway, he started it up one morning after it ran fine all day and he said it was idling super rough and blowing black smoke out of the tailpipe. He turned it on for me and even through the phone it sounded like somehow it jumped timing.

At the dealership this morning in Miami, the service adviser basically told him that it's fucked (verbatim actually) and that most likely a tensioner went out.

So, how fucked is he? Are these interference motors (thinking along the lines of bent valves too) and is this a problem that is common? I'd never heard of it before and always thought that the motors were pretty much bulletproof. Any advice/condolences for him would be great since he really doesn't know much about cars.