An enduring Legacy: farewell to one of Subaru's greatest hits

The turbulence of this transforming new car market has already claimed some notable victims. Who would have imagined a world without Mondeos and Fiestas just a handful of years ago?

And true car obsessives will soon have another name to mournfully raise a glass to, because Subaru Legacy production will end this spring.

Okay, its loss won’t garner the same school-run or L-plate anecdotes as those famous Fords, but the Legacy is a car of importance to people like us.

For those of a certain generation, it was a punchy purchase for a modest bunch of credits on Gran Turismo; for others, it’s the machine that Colin McRae drove to his first World Rally Championship win back in 1993.

While its legend may pale beside the Impreza’s, its legacy (yes, yes…) is no less impressive. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper to buy used, too. As Impreza prices rise seemingly by the minute, the most celebrated 22B versions nudging quarter of a million, Legacys continue to sell for peanuts.

The square plates signify the origin of the 1999 GT-B we have here as the Japanese domestic market (JDM), and it represents one of the most potent iterations in the Legacy’s 36-year life, yet it can be easily bought for less than £5000 in decent nick. Well, once you’ve found one for sale…

Alongside it is the survivor, the amalgamation of Legacy DNA that you can still buy showroom-fresh in Britain. Indeed, 752 people did just that in 2024, making the Outback Subaru’s best-seller amid successful year-on-year stats.

Launched in 1995 as a raised and cladded variant of the Legacy estate, the Outback soon became a model all of its own – one with a life still ahead of it.

Once Subaru wound down its WRC programme and stopped selling asbo Imprezas, its UK audience returned to being a loyal, rural lot, and thus the sole spec in which you can buy the current Outback is targeted perfectly at them – so far away from the spec of the GT-B.

Indeed, the two turbochargers of this pairing aren’t shared out evenly. While the 200,000-mile Legacy you see here puts 276bhp through Subaru’s famed symmetrical all-wheel drive system via a taut five-speed manual gearbox, its modern-day relative makes do with 167 naturally aspirated horses and a continuously variable transmission.

No car has managed to extract thrills from one of those, but then the jumped-up suspension and rugged roof rails suggest the Outback treads a wholly different path to the gnarlier GT-B and its bonnet scoop.

“Space, pace and a handsome face” was Subaru’s blueprint for the Legacy back in 1989, and its most luxurious car to date was designed primarily for the US market, where it and the Outback have sold well ever since, consistently surfing the crest of owner-satisfaction surveys.

It wasn’t long before the enthusiasts within the company got their hands on it, though, and a seemingly infinite number of multi-suffixed specials fill racing games and online resources in a befuddling array of configurations.

This GT-B is a prime example to highlight its performance prowess, although its besotted owner, Daren Patient, encourages prudence before I clamber into the enveloping sports seat, keen to fulfil an ambition held since I bought one of these in Mustard Mica via a PlayStation pad.

“It doesn’t corner like an Impreza,” he warns, reminding me of the Legacy’s classier intent. He needn’t have worried.

Nostalgia fizzes through me the moment I turn the key and the wubbah-wubbah of its idling 2.0-litre boxer permeates the chilled morning air like the twin rotors of an approaching Chinook.

The engine is already warmed from photography runs and the long straight out of our glamorous lay-by is a perfect opportunity to experience late-’90s twin-turbo delivery, a world before the hot-vee and mild-hybrid solutions that help solve turbo lag today.

Indeed, the power only truly hits at around 4000rpm, once both turbos boost in unison, when acceleration builds and soars, rather than hitting like a sledgehammer.

Once into its stride, the GT-B feels unstoppable, and you end up wishing for more than its five gears, as if the speed would just keep climbing with the comically repeated upshifts of a movie car chase.

Once a corner arrives, its brakes inspire confidence, and its dinky but well-spaced pedal box allows you to blip downshifts easily.

Yet this laid-back Legacy never demands such intricacies from its driver. The significance of its ‘B’ affix can’t be underplayed, the work of its standard Bilsteins bordering on the ethereal.

I’ve driven very few cars that balance ride comfort and handling nous to this degree. It resists roll with even ambitious cornering speeds and its responses are endlessly faithful, all without trading composure over the worst of a British back road.

And what’s truly extraordinary is that this car runs on its original dampers, an engine rebuild being the only major mechanical blemish in its long life.

While it never truly entertains like a hot Impreza, it’s a precise thing whose vast all-weather capability draws you in. I’m not sure that a modern Volkswagen Golf R Estate, with higher peak power and a quarter-century’s worth of tech development at its disposal, would pull out much of a gap ahead.

The interior immediately ages the experience – of course it does – but exemplary refinement and rock-star flourishes like its frameless doors would delight every time you drove it.

After that, the modern Outback can only feel like what it is: a crossover. Subaru reckons its 1995 progenitor began the trend (“the driving choice of everyone from the landed gentry to outdoors families”, reads the bumf), but it’s fair to say you’re unlikely to cross-shop this with many rivals nowadays.

You surely buy a Subaru if you want a Subaru, and thankfully at least two people every day still crave the single-minded spec of this latest Outback.

Curiously, they’re getting the car with more heft to its steering, drama to its damping and noise in its cabin of this pair. Which isn’t to say that it’s especially rough or boisterous, merely that it proves how thoroughly engineered and wide in its remit that GT-B truly was.

From the off, the Outback is much less sporting, pitching and rolling its way through corners and demanding a concerted effort to get up to speed, its lack of turbos evident and its CVT droning away under big throttle loads.

But once you’ve adapted to its power delivery, I can see this being a thoroughly easy thing to live with.

It occupies a pleasing precipice between traditional engineering and new technology, blending in mandatory driver assistance systems as well as we can expect (Subaru launched its Eyesight technology suite more than a decade ago, long before the rulebooks demanded this stuff), while its big infotainment touchscreen is very neatly integrated.

Daren is especially satisfied by the absence of the tacked-on-tablet aesthetic that many modern dashboards possess. 

Starting at £37,995, it also feels good value in the area Subarus have always majored: perceived engineering, rather than the perceived quality its German foes have traditionally done so well. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if this Outback is still going strong a few decades from now. It’s unabashed about its own USP, and in a market that can struggle for true diversity in light of vast platform- and powertrain-sharing, here’s a brand that proudly sells something rarer-groove.

These two make a merry pair – one that really proves the flexibility of this model lineage. Even if they no longer share a name, there’s a common integrity that ties them together.

While I would be reluctant to recommend the current Outback to many folks outside of its core customer set, it’s a charmer, and the bones of it are admirable.

With more focused damping, extra power and a gratifying gearbox, it would properly satisfy its driver. All the elements that elevate its GT-B ancestor for a fraction of the price, essentially.

Raise a glass to the Legacy – and buy one before everyone else realises what they’re missing.