Subaru Legacy GT-B

Author's Car rating:   

Reliability	Excellent
Comfort	Good
Security	Excellent
Looks	Satisfactory
Fuel consumption	Poor

Advantages:	performance, anonymity, comfort
Disadvantages:	Only available as parallel import

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full car review

Subaru: a company with a severe personality disorder. They are known in this country for three of the most diverse cars available: you can select either a pocket-rocket Impreza Turbo, usually painted bright Kingfisher blue with a huge wing, loud exhaust and banzai driver; a rather good “soft-roader” mini 4x4 called the Forrester, or a sturdy estate called the Legacy, usually seen covered in farmyard muck and driven by the sort of ladies who wear sensible shoes and a scarf all year.
One day the engineers must have had a few too many glasses of Sake and got bored: “Let’s combine the Impreza with the Legacy”. It must have sounded like a good idea at the time. So this is what they did:

Recipe for GT-B:
Step one: Take one boring farmers estate car. Add a little wing at the back and front, with side skirts, which fall off as soon as you go off-road. Put in Gangsta tinted windows all round just like real celebs use.
Fit huge wheels and tyres and ask those nice people at Porsche to have a look at improving the suspension. Cut a hole in the bonnet to let hot air out.
Somehow leave it still looking pretty anonymous. Unless you decide to paint it wild yellow or peacock blue (mine is silver).

Step two: Rip out the interior. Go on, take it all and throw it away. Replace it with leather rally-style seats all round, chuck on a couple of sunroofs and install a humungous stereo system. Sling on a sexy Momo steering wheel and gearstick, and replace that dashboard with one covered in that special Japanese fake carbon-fibre. Install a huge air-conditioning system; electrify anything that can be powered and you have finished the interior.

Step three: Throw away the engine. Now Subaru are a little bit odd when it comes to engines. For a start, they flatten them. Instead of having them pistons going up and down like any normal car, they lay them on their side facing each other. Apart from the old AlfaSud and the Porsche 911, nobody else can be bothered to do this. They say it keeps the centre of gravity low, but I reckon they do it just to be different.
The other odd thing about Subaru is they like little engines. They do make up to three litre jobs, but their hearts aren’t really in it. What they like doing is to take a two litre motor and squeeze the absolute last bit of power out of it.

In the Legacy GT-B they build a little engine and then add two turbochargers: one little one that starts working a little above idle to give good low-speed performance, and one huge great one that sends you flying at high speed. They claim you end up with 280bhp, but actually you get quite a bit more. Under the bonnet lurks a nightmare of pipes, wiring and turbochargers, with intercoolers and electronics that defy analysis.

Subaru then throw away the exhaust and replace it with one large enough to hide a rat down. They keep the four-wheel drive, though, but fit enormous brakes, which is handy.

For folk who like figures, here’s how well the car goes:
Power: 280bhp
Torque: 253/5000rpm
Weight: 1480 kilo
Speed: 150 (though I have seen 165 abroad)
0-60: 5.6 seconds (if you want to buy a new clutch)

How did I get mine?
I started a new job three years ago, which didn’t offer a car. I acquired a boy-racer machine, but family and dog rebelled. I needed a family estate. Something spacious, comfortable, quiet but fast and reliable. So I looked at various Mercedes, BMWs and Audis before realising that I would look like every other car in the car-park and they were all a bit…boring.
Now I wasn’t new to Subaru, having already owned three and was already a convert to their eccentric ways. One of the early models I had featured “part-time” four-wheel drive, which turns on when it rains. Subaru chose to put intermittent wipers on this model, so the rear wheels would engage for roughly half the time. Crazy people at Subaru!
I heard about a car imported by Subaru themselves which was now for sale, and rushed to try it. Not only was I smitten, but also fragrant wife’s initials are GT-B, which is handy. “I bought it for you, dear.”

In over two years the Legacy has been superb: anonymous (don’t laugh) comfortable and very fast. After 50,000 miles, nothing has dropped off.

Practical stuff:
Well it’s not exactly cheap to run. Petrol has to be Super Unleaded and it’s simply not possible to get much more than 20 mpg. Servicing is every 6,000 miles. Tyres come off the nearest Jumbo and are priced accordingly. As for Insurance, have you tried Group 20 yet? But if you want supercar performance, you have to pay for it.

So how do I get one?
Ah! Here’s the rub. If you wander down to your local Subaru showroom they’ll look at you in wonderment. Sorry, they’ll tell you, there is no such car. Which is true, in the UK. The GT-B is what is called a parallel import. What this means is that while Subaru sells the car in Japan, Australasia and other diverse parts of the world, they have chosen not to sell it in the UK. Instead a whole industry has grown up around importing and supplying this and similar cars. Dodgy, eh?

Well, not really. The cars are made UK legal and are all given warranties, and because prices in Japan are much lower than here, they are cheap for what you get. How about a three-year old one for £15,000 or a new one for £28,000? There’s a saloon version as well, called the B4, which is even better value. It may sound a lot, but compared with any remotely equivalent BMW or Audi, it’s cheap.

This is a car I have enjoyed more than any other in the last 30 years driving. If you are into these things I greatly recommend it. I forgot to mention that I still don’t tire that when you indicate at night an extra headlight turns on just to show you the the way round the next corner. Crazy guys at Subaru!