2005 SUBARU LEGACY Review - Base Price $20,995
All-new design brings refinement and power.
Introduction
The Subaru Legacy has been thoroughly redesigned for 2005. It's bigger than previous-generation models and comes with new styling and new interiors. The 2005 Legacy wagons and sedans are roomier, more comfortable and more contemporary than before. They look sleeker and more contemporary. They handle better and feel more refined, benefits of a more rigid chassis and wider track. They're sportier, too, with a powerful new Legacy GT model added to the lineup.
Equipped with all-wheel drive and a 250-horsepower turbocharged engine, the Legacy GT attacks mountain roads like a sports car. It boasts a seemingly perfect balance of ride and handling. Around town and on the highway it offers a nice, smooth ride and handles bumpy sections particularly well.
No mid-size sedan inspires more confidence on a wet road than the Subaru Legacy. The Legacy wagons are eminently practical and two-thirds of all Legacy buyers choose them. Subaru continues to offer all-wheel-drive as standard equipment on every vehicle in its product line.
Long a cult favorite in inclement climes, Subaru is gradually stretching beyond its traditional base in geography, performance and pricing. The company wants shoppers to think of Subaru as a premium entry in its class. To this end, it's polishing its quality and technical credentials. The 2005 Legacy 2.5i and 2.5 GT go a long way toward achieving these goals. They are more sophisticated and more refined than before. While continuing to offer the utility, safety, performance, and reliability loyal Subaru customers expect, the new models are more stylish, offer more performance, and exude more emotion than previous models.
Interior
The interior of the 2005 Legacy has been completely redesigned. It's quieter, less busy, with more expanse of unbroken, softly textured dash. The center stack, housing the stereo and climate control panels, is finished in a rich, matte metallic look, with the stereo controls properly positioned above the climate control knobs. Our only complaint is with the stereo's tuning function: Where there should be a tuning knob is a round, PDA-type rocker button dedicated to selecting the sound source, while tuning must be done by depressing either end of a rocker lever beneath the volume knob and waiting while the tuner dutifully scrolls its way through the frequencies. At the top of the center stack is a covered storage bin between two, well-proportioned air registers. The large, round, easy-to-read speedometer and tachometer are braced by fuel and water temperature gauges.
Door panels are accented by the same matte metallic trim surrounding longitudinal insets housing door pulls and window buttons below bright metal-finished door handles.
The GT's front seats are easily up to the capability of the car, with decent bottom and side bolsters to contain occupants during rambunctious motoring. The seats in the 2.5i are more in tune with commutes and long-distance drives. Head and hip room is accommodating, but adjusting the front seats for six-footers leaves rear seat legroom cramped. The rear seats in Legacy models are adequate, with relatively flat seat bottoms and a low seating position without a lot of leg room. The center head restraint on the rear seat is fixed in the sedan and adjustable in the wagon.
Pedals are well placed, if not especially conducive to heel-and-toe downshifts. The steering wheel rim is thick and contoured for comfortable and confident grip at the recommended 9-and-3 positions. The shift lever falls readily to hand. Shifts in the manual, while not exactly rubbery, could be a bit more precise, and downshifting with confidence takes some practice. The Sportshift gate is where it should be, toward the driver; push the shifter forward for upshifts, pull back for downshifts.
The sloping hood makes for improved forward visibility. Good-sized rear quarter windows minimize the blindage from the C-pillars. Thin sails leave room for an expansive backlight (rear windscreen) that fills the rearview mirror.
The bottom portions of the door panels hold fixed map pockets, limiting flexibility of use. Front and rear seats get two cup holders. There's a net for magazines attached to the front seatback. The center console isn't especially commodious, but it has an auxiliary power outlet for cell phones, leaving the lighter outlet in the base of the C-stack for a radar detector. The sedan's trunk is fully finished, with its gooseneck hinges enclosed to prevent inadvertently smashed groceries. The station wagon cargo area boasts two covered storage bins.
Walk-Around
Despite a host of changes to its appearance, the 2005 Legacy is clearly a Subaru. The new Legacy looks sleeker and more contemporary than previous models.
The lower corners of the grille have been tucked inward, yielding an elongated, more elegant hexagonal shape. Bold, projector-type headlights dominate sculpted, BMW-like openings, which also house the turn indicators and running lights. Small, intense foglamps bracket a wide air intake molded into the lower fascia below the front bumper. Rounder sides give the body a fuller-looking shape. More deeply etched character lines in the hood add perceived motion and emphasize the 2005's slightly wider track. The hood scoop feeding air to the turbocharger is understated, but obviously functional.
The 2005 Legacy's incrementally longer wheelbase and 2 inches of added overall length allow more of a wedge shape, led by a lower, more sloping hood. The horizontally opposed, or boxer, engine is mounted low, allowing for a low hood and low center of gravity. A-pillars rise smoothly out of the front fenders over a nicely arched glasshouse, trailing down into BMW-like C-pillars. Bustle-like hindquarters finish with a gradual taper inward, easing the passage of air into the car's wake. Body-colored door handles hinge upward and are more tightly styled into the door panels.
The back end is seriously concave, with a better-integrated bumper fascia. Taillights are larger, more than mildly reminiscent of the Honda Civic, and now bracket the trunk lid, which houses a less angular license plate opening. Chrome dual exhaust tips on the GT models poke out beneath arched cutouts at each corner, hyping the Legacy's sporty aspirations.
Impressions
Driving the new Legacy is enjoyable. It's more agile than last year's model. No, it's not a sports car, but it is the most responsive, best handling Legacy yet, sufficiently so to keep up with and sometimes embarrass many an aspirational sports sedan on winding roads. Driving the turbocharged Legacy GT on a mountain road brought out the racer in us, accelerating hard out of the corners, down the straightaways, braking hard for the next corner as we set up for the next apex. Throw in some rain and the Legacy GT is unbeatable by anything in its class.
Extensive use of aluminum in the hood, bumper beams and suspension components, and high strength, hydroformed steel, combined with a more compact engine design, cut some 200 pounds off the curb weight. It also concentrated more of that weight toward the car's middle. Less weight is better and moving some of the weight rearward are good things. Dropping the engine in the chassis by about an inch and redesigning the rear suspension lowered the center of gravity. All of this, together with the wider track, make for an agile, lively car on a winding road.
The GT model has strong power (250 horsepower), making it fun to accelerate out of corners. Turbo lag is minimal, and once it spools up, the engine develops strong torque as it climbs rapidly and smoothly to redline, taking the car to an indicated 140 mph.
The 2.5i models benefit from a slight power increase (3 horsepower) over last year's models along with reduced weight. This makes them quicker than before. The manual transmission makes the best use of the engine's 168 horsepower.
The suspension soaks up road bumps and joints, with a bit more resonance (vibration) from the 17-inch wheels than the base 16-inch wheels. Washboard pavement in corners unsettles things enough to notice, but not enough to slow down. The Legacy is stable, though at very high speeds we noticed it was susceptible to cross winds and turbulence generated by 18-wheelers. Brakes in the various models are up to their powerplants' potential, with the top-of-the-line GT Limited well deserving of its high-performance componentry. The brakes are easy to modulate. Winding down a mountain road in Southern California, we found the brakes, suspension and engine in the GT wagon easy to coordinate, allowing for smooth driving that didn't upset our passengers. Little wind noise intrudes at highway speeds, save for around the seal around the moonroof when the undershade is retracted and from roof rack crossbars.
The all-wheel-drive system in the Legacy models differs in technical details by drivetrain: When fitted with the manual transmission, the all-wheel-drive system uses a viscous coupling, a locking center differential that splits the engine's power between the front and rear wheels; if the tires at one end begin to slip, the system sends more power to the other end; optimally, the split is 50/50, but power transfer can reach 100 percent to either end under extreme conditions. The four-speed automatic is matched with an electronically managed, continuously variable transfer clutch that distributes the power where it's best used, but no more than 50/50. The five-speed automatic transmission brings with it the most technologically advanced of Subaru's all wheel-drive system, the VTD, for Variable Torque Distribution. An electronically controlled, continuously variable hydraulic transfer clutch manages the power distribution through a planetary center differential. Under normal conditions, the VTD splits the power 45/55 front/rear to give the GT more of a rear wheel-drive feel, but adjustments, to a maximum of 50/50, are made as road conditions dictate. All of these systems give the Legacy a sure-footed feel and greatly improve grip and handling stability in slippery conditions.
Summary
The new Subaru Legacy is refined, polished, powerful, agile. It's fun to drive and has a smooth, pleasant ride. It's equipped with state-of-the art active and passive safety features and boasts better-than-respectable fuel economy.
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