Efficiency, practicality, journey and dealing with stability: Legacy GT-B nails all of them
After 36 years, Subaru Legacy manufacturing is about to finish. We displays on the lineage’s numerous enchantment
The turbulence of this remodeling new automobile market has already claimed some notable victims. Who would have imagined a world with out Mondeos and Fiestas only a handful of years in the past?
And true automobile obsessives will quickly have one other title to mournfully increase a glass to, as a result of Subaru Legacy manufacturing will finish this spring.
Okay, its loss gained’t garner the identical school-run or L-plate anecdotes as these well-known Fords, however the Legacy is a automobile of significance to individuals like us.
For these of a sure era, it was a punchy buy for a modest bunch of credit on Gran Turismo; for others, it’s the machine that Colin McRae drove to his first World Rally Championship win again in 1993.
Whereas its legend could pale beside the Impreza’s, its legacy (sure, sure…) isn’t any much less spectacular. It’s a heck of loads cheaper to purchase used, too. As Impreza costs rise seemingly by the minute, essentially the most celebrated 22B variations nudging quarter of one million, Legacys proceed to promote for peanuts.
The sq. plates signify the origin of the 1999 GT-B now we have right here because the Japanese home market (JDM), and it represents one of the crucial potent iterations within the Legacy’s 36-year life, but it may be simply purchased for lower than £5000 in respectable nick. Properly, when you’ve discovered one on the market…
Alongside it’s the survivor, the amalgamation of Legacy DNA you can nonetheless purchase showroom-fresh in Britain. Certainly, 752 individuals did simply that in 2024, making the Outback Subaru’s best-seller amid profitable year-on-year stats.
Launched in 1995 as a raised and cladded variant of the Legacy property, the Outback quickly turned a mannequin all of its personal – one with a life nonetheless forward of it.
As soon as Subaru wound down its WRC programme and stopped promoting asbo Imprezas, its UK viewers returned to being a loyal, rural lot, and thus the only spec through which you should buy the present Outback is focused completely at them – so distant from the spec of the GT-B.
Certainly, the 2 turbochargers of this pairing aren’t shared out evenly. Whereas the 200,000-mile Legacy you see right here places 276bhp by Subaru’s famed symmetrical all-wheel drive system by way of a taut five-speed guide gearbox, its modern-day relative makes do with 167 naturally aspirated horses and a repeatedly variable transmission.
No automobile has managed to extract thrills from a kind of, however then the jumped-up suspension and rugged roof rails counsel the Outback treads an entirely completely different path to the gnarlier GT-B and its bonnet scoop.
“House, tempo and a good-looking face” was Subaru’s blueprint for the Legacy again in 1989, and its most luxurious automobile thus far was designed primarily for the US market, the place it and the Outback have bought effectively ever since, constantly browsing the crest of owner-satisfaction surveys.
It wasn’t lengthy earlier than the fans inside the firm bought their palms on it, although, and a seemingly infinite variety of multi-suffixed specials fill racing video games and on-line sources in a befuddling array of configurations.
This GT-B is a main instance to focus on its efficiency prowess, though its besotted proprietor, Daren Affected person, encourages prudence earlier than I clamber into the enveloping sports activities seat, eager to fulfil an ambition held since I purchased certainly one of these in Mustard Mica by way of a PlayStation pad.
“It doesn’t nook like an Impreza,” he warns, reminding me of the Legacy’s classier intent. He needn’t have apprehensive.
Nostalgia fizzes by me the second I flip the important thing and the wubbah-wubbah of its idling 2.0-litre boxer permeates the chilled morning air like the dual rotors of an approaching Chinook.
The engine is already warmed from images runs and the lengthy straight out of our glamorous lay-by is an ideal alternative to expertise late-’90s twin-turbo supply, a world earlier than the hot-vee and mild-hybrid options that assist resolve turbo lag at this time.
Certainly, the ability solely actually hits at round 4000rpm, as soon as each turbos enhance in unison, when acceleration builds and soars, fairly than hitting like a sledgehammer.
As soon as into its stride, the GT-B feels unstoppable, and you find yourself wishing for greater than its 5 gears, as if the velocity would simply hold climbing with the comically repeated upshifts of a film automobile chase.
As soon as a nook arrives, its brakes encourage confidence, and its dinky however well-spaced pedal field lets you blip downshifts simply.
But this laid-back Legacy by no means calls for such intricacies from its driver. The importance of its ‘B’ affix can’t be underplayed, the work of its customary Bilsteins bordering on the ethereal.
I’ve pushed only a few automobiles that stability journey consolation and dealing with nous to this diploma. It resists roll with even bold cornering speeds and its responses are endlessly trustworthy, all with out buying and selling composure over the worst of a British again highway.
And what’s actually extraordinary is that this automobile runs on its unique dampers, an engine rebuild being the one main mechanical blemish in its lengthy life.
Whereas it by no means actually entertains like a sizzling Impreza, it’s a exact factor whose huge all-weather functionality attracts you in. I’m undecided {that a} trendy Volkswagen Golf R Property, with greater peak energy and a quarter-century’s value of tech growth at its disposal, would pull out a lot of a niche forward.
The inside instantly ages the expertise – after all it does – however exemplary refinement and rock-star prospers like its frameless doorways would delight each time you drove it.
After that, the trendy Outback can solely really feel like what it’s: a crossover. Subaru reckons its 1995 progenitor started the pattern (“the driving alternative of everybody from the landed gentry to outside households”, reads the bumf), however it’s honest to say you’re unlikely to cross-shop this with many rivals these days.
You certainly purchase a Subaru if you would like a Subaru, and fortunately at the least two individuals on daily basis nonetheless crave the single-minded spec of this newest Outback.
Curiously, they’re getting the automobile with extra heft to its steering, drama to its damping and noise in its cabin of this pair. Which isn’t to say that it’s particularly tough or boisterous, merely that it proves how completely engineered and large in its remit that GT-B actually was.
From the off, the Outback is far much less sporting, pitching and rolling its means by corners and demanding a concerted effort to stand up to hurry, its lack of turbos evident and its CVT droning away beneath huge throttle hundreds.
However when you’ve tailored to its energy supply, I can see this being a completely simple factor to reside with.
It occupies a satisfying precipice between conventional engineering and new expertise, mixing in necessary driver help programs in addition to we will count on (Subaru launched its Eyesight expertise suite greater than a decade in the past, lengthy earlier than the rulebooks demanded these things), whereas its huge infotainment touchscreen may be very neatly built-in.
Daren is particularly glad by the absence of the tacked-on-tablet aesthetic that many trendy dashboards possess.
Beginning at £37,995, it additionally feels good worth within the space Subarus have all the time majored: perceived engineering, fairly than the perceived high quality its German foes have historically performed so effectively.
I wouldn’t be shocked if this Outback remains to be going sturdy just a few many years from now. It’s unabashed about its personal USP, and in a market that may wrestle for true variety in gentle of huge platform- and powertrain-sharing, right here’s a model that proudly sells one thing rarer-groove.
These two make a merry pair – one that actually proves the flexibleness of this mannequin lineage. Even when they not share a reputation, there’s a standard integrity that ties them collectively.
Whereas I might be reluctant to advocate the present Outback to many people outdoors of its core buyer set, it’s a charmer, and the bones of it are admirable.
With extra targeted damping, further energy and a gratifying gearbox, it could correctly fulfill its driver. All the weather that elevate its GT-B ancestor for a fraction of the value, basically.
Increase a glass to the Legacy – and purchase one earlier than everybody else realises what they’re lacking.
