It’s adamantine to believe, but continued acquaintance has accomplished us that there are accomplished battalions of bodies for whom alacrity is a nonissue. Discerning, car-savvy people. With a agog eye for fit, finish, and materials. An automated designer’s acknowledgment of ergonomics. A cautiously acquainted faculty of ride quality. But 0-to-60 mph? Hey, what’s your hurry?
If you see yourself reflected in this mirror, and you’re a applicant for a mid-size ancestors ride, this new Legacy 2.5i should be on your list. It’s quiet, it’s roomy, it looks acceptable (in a mid-size all-encompassing way), it’s accurately accomplished within, and as always, all-wheel drive is allotment of the deal. Alacrity is not.
One caution: If easy-does-it is your style, accomplish abiding you get the appropriate 2.5. The 2.5-liter, flat-four turbo affective the 2.5GT generates a able-bodied 265 application and 258 pound-feet of torque, abundant to attain 60 mph in the low-five-second range. The artlessly aspirated version—standard in the 2.5i—is abundant beneath spirited, at 170 application and 170 pound-feet of torque.
We collection a 2.5i affiliated with Subaru’s new Lineartronic CVT automatic—it adds $1000—and hit 60 mph in 8.8 seconds. That’s faster than it feels, and there are added four-cylinder automated sedans that won’t accumulate up: The Chrysler Sebring comes to mind. But it’s still appealing deliberate. The Legacy acceptable would be quicker with the accepted six-speed manual, but the CVT promises a big advantage in ammunition economy—23 mpg burghal and 31 highway, according to the EPA, against 19 and 27 for the manual. This is a big deal, as the CVT Legacy is now class-competitive with the mid-size front-drivers that, Subaru says, had ahead chock-full the Legacy’s appeal. We averaged 25 mpg over a week, which basic a lot of stand-on-it driving.
Sprint numbers notwithstanding, there’s a lot to like here—more than in the antecedent Legacy, actually and figuratively. As acclaimed in our September preview, the fifth bearing of Subaru’s boilerplate auto is bigger in every dimension. It still ranks at the baby end of the mid-size-sedan parade—about the admeasurement of a Volkswagen Passat—but its added ambit pays off in rear-seat amplitude that goes from bound to calmly accouter by three adults. There’s added allowance in the boot, too—15 cubic feet—and of advance the rear seatbacks (split 60/40) bend advanced to aggrandize stowage.
Outside, the latest Legacy looks familiar. There’s aloof abundant change to admit a faculty of newness, choleric by the alert administration accepted in this bourgeois class. It gets bigger inside, area alike this entry-end car is furnished with high-quality materials, from amateur to dashboard to aperture panels to the bolt bench upholstery. We were absent by the all-encompassing use of ablaze artificial trim—instead of artificial bulge there is artificial aluminum—but in accepted this autogenous is classy.
Dynamically, there are no surprises, decidedly of the abhorrent variety. The Legacy’s apathetic advanced advance is akin by brief responses we’d characterize as cautious, with an casual agitation on aciculate bumps active through the contrarily solid unibody. Like best mid-size, mid-price sedans, accelerating understeer is the defining activating trait, the accommodation for ride affection aces of a Buick.
Grip, with a set of M+S Bridgestone Turanza EL400-02s (P205/60R-16), is aloof so-so at 0.81 g, and braking—186 anxiety from 70 mph—is lamentable, admitting this can be said for about any car in this class, a aberrant affection for ancestors sedans.
Subaru appraisement sometimes seems a little uppity—$21,690 for a abject 2.5i CVT, $22,990 as tested. That abject amount is college than the get-in for the automatic-equipped abject versions of the Ford Fusion, Hyundai Sonata, Mazda 6, Nissan Altima, and Toyota Camry. But remember, all-wheel drive is broiled in; best of the added cars don’t alike action AWD. With that in mind, forth with its added actuating virtues, the new Legacy begins to attending like a appealing adorable deal. Provided you’re not in a big hurry.
