In
February I found myself looking for a new car. I was rear-ended,
totaling my Mazda 3 (Hatchback! 2.5L! HID lights! So sad...). It's
funny how getting in an accident causes you to see accidents coming
from everywhere.
As
a result, I wasn't
willing to make any safety compromises
during my new car search.
Safety is roughly
correlated with size, so I
targeted a mid-size
sedan
or small SUV. I also
required four
or five stars on all the government tests and good or acceptable on
all the IIHS tests. Preferably the
car would be
an IIHS Top Safety Pick, which
includes the newish
technology
of Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB). I
decided to make that a requirement, which quickly cut down my
options.
I
ultimately chose the Subaru Legacy, and
I'll comment on the competition below. After
a thousand miles I've found mostly positives with
a few negatives. Still, none of the other options stand
out as better.
The
Subaru Legacy is above all a sensible choice. It is a practical
mid-size sedan with literally the highest possible safety scores. It
comes with all-wheel drive but also achieves respectable fuel
mileage (at
least according to government testing).
And
after testing most
of the competition,
I think the Legacy offers some
driving enjoyment as
well.
Exterior/Interior
Design
I
find the Legacy's exterior style to be sharp, though perhaps erring
on the conservative side. Those who know me might see why that was a
good match. Inside, I've always liked Subaru's aesthetic, a sort of
no-nonsense quality. All the materials that will be regularly touched
are great, but
some of the less prominent pieces are cheap. A few mold lines show.
However, I prefer it to the
competition. The materials are no worse than, say, an Accord, and the
design is open, intuitive, and simple.
The
one flaw in the interior is the driver's seat comfort, at least for
me at 6' 2”. It's
slowly breaking in
and will probably
feel great, but
right now the lumbar is too strong and the back rest too flat. I'm
either leaning way back and getting lower back pain or sitting up too
straight and hunched over; I can't seem to find a middle ground. But,
seats are very dependent on the person, so just be sure to spend some
quality time in one if
you are considering buying.
Features
versus price is a strong point for the Legacy. At the 2.5i Premium
trim level, Subaru charges
less than other mid-level trim competitors and
offers most of what would be nice to have. You get a 10-way (don't
ask me to find all 10) power adjustable driver's seat, leather
wrapped steering wheel and shift knob, heated (cloth!) seats, auto
headlights, a big touch screen radio, bluetooth, 60/40 split folding
rear seat, and other stuff. The feature set is more than enough,
though I do miss key-fob-in-my-pocket
entry and start.
The
Drive
I've
generally thought
of myself as a driving enthusiast, but
with the only
evidence being decades of
Car and
Driver (C&D)
subscriptions (and a
couple rental-car Nurburgring laps).
Each of my last three cars (2003 Acura RSX, 2010 VW Golf TDI, 2014
Mazda 3) was one of their 10 Best, until the Legacy. They hate
the Legacy, and so for me, this is a cognitive grey zone. I think the
Legacy has a lot to offer in the handling department, but C&D
find it to be woefully lacking compared to an Accord or Mazda 6.
Those two cars are certainly tauter and more immediately responsive.
My Mazda 3 was the more athletic sibling to the Mazda 6, and it sure
turned in faster than the Legacy. My RSX had steering that
was more eager
to express what it was feeling
than a contestant on
The
Bachelor. But those are high-strung, front drive cars. They
communicate a lack of steadiness in corners, with their immediate
turn-in matched by an immediate willingness to run wide. The Legacy
certainly turns in with less pizzazz, but mid corner it shows some
bite and a
willingness to
rotate. All with a
completely unruffled demeanor.
I recently hustled it down a winding road from a local ski area, and
it was quite a bit of fun. On the same road my Mazda 3 was likely
faster with less effort, but pushing it to 7/10's or 8/10's (and
that's being generous for my driving skill) didn't feel as reliable.
That could be because of the Legacy's party trick, Active Torque
Vectoring, which works in concert with the all-wheel drive and can
brake the inside
front wheel when you’re on the throttle to help rotate the car
while turning.
Or maybe I'm just a noob and don't know good dynamics. Regardless,
for me the Legacy can be enjoyable, and
it certainly rides better than an
Accord or Mazda 6.
The
Subaru's one
significant dynamic
downside is that it’s slow. It
has very similar acceleration times to my TDI Golf, but without the
advantage of ridiculous torque. An
engine and transmission tuned for fuel economy combined with all
wheel drive will do that. Thankfully
the engine sounds pretty good when being wrung out, because you have
to do that a lot. The
sound from the flat-four is a
smooth low-pitch growl.
This
isn't what many auto journalists want I guess, and the
flat-four is often
insulted as being
“agricultural.” I grew up on a farm, so maybe
I have positive associations with agricultural equipment.
The
transmission is a CVT, which makes it an abomination to most
reviewers.
For
small throttle requests it is uninspiring, causing the car to
putt-putt around at low RPMs. However, the Legacy's CVT is programmed
to act like a stepped transmission when any significant acceleration
is requested, and it does it pretty well. It can't match any real
performance transmission, but it is more willing to “downshift”
under medium throttle than my Mazda 3 was.
Safe
and Secure
Safety
is perhaps the
strongest selling point of the Subaru Legacy. In the intro I
mentioned that it had the highest possible crash test scores. I was
not being figurative. In NHTSA testing the Legacy received 5/5 stars
in every individual
test
they
conducted.
From the IIHS, the Legacy gets Good crash ratings (the top) and a
Superior AEB
crash
avoidance rating (the top). In the two IIHS tests, Eyesight (the
Subaru AEB system) avoided any impact. Eyesight
is available on all but the lowest trim, making it very affordable to
add (unlike most competitors, the Accord being the exception).
Braking
also appears to be a strong point, with Consumer Reports indicating
shorter braking distances than most (all?) other midsize sedans. One
downside in safety
testing
appears to be the headlights. IIHS
published
results
about
a month after I purchased, giving
the Legacy's headlights
the lowest rating
(very
few sedans got good marks without pricey upgrades).
I've found the headlights to be acceptable,
though not great.
Yes,
I am now officially middle-age.
Getting
older, with a family now in tow everywhere, means I make choices
differently. Like buying a slow, safe mid-size car. When I was
younger I bought cars that were more fun and less practical, even if
I never let the animal spirits go wild with a Porsche or Lotus. But
now safety and budget override, and the Legacy wins there. If all
else were equal, would I have bought a Mazda 6 with it's tighter
handling? Probably, as an encore to my sorely missed Mazda 3 and to
relieve the C&D induced cognitive dissonance I now suffer from.
But really, there's no good reason not to enjoy the Legacy.
Bits
and pieces
The
Legacy seemed quieter than the Accord and doesn't depend on faux
engine muzak. I've had no problem with jerky starts from rest, a
common reviewer complaint on 2015s. In the first thousand miles, fuel
mileage has been a disappointing 26 – 27 mpg, slightly lower than I
would expect with a Camry and much lower than I would expect with an
Accord. Yes, our family now has a FWD SUV and an AWD sedan. The
bluetooth integration has a few bugs, in particular it restarts
bluetooth music after a call even if the music was paused. The
styling has bits of old SAAB 95 in the headlights and old Honda Civic
in the taillights. Subaru's Indiana assembly was a plus, though the
Accord is assembled in Ohio and has a higher percentage of American
parts.
The
Competition
What
competition did I consider? I've never been enticed by Hyundai/Kia.
I'd consider them if they presented something unique, but in my case
they don't. Similarly, the Chrysler 200 was also an option, but
without the V6 ($$$) I just wasn't interested. The new Malibu wasn't
safety rated in time. Applying my criteria left these in need of test
drives:
New:
Honda Accord, Honda CR-V, Mazda 6, Subaru Legacy, Subaru Forester,
Subaru Outback, Toyota Camry, Toyota Rav4.
Used:
Volvo S60.
Here's
the minimum price for new 2016
options
with AEB:
Honda
Accord: $24,480
Subaru
Legacy: $25,835
Subaru
Forester: $27,940
Subaru
Outback: $29,940
Chrysler
200: $31,550
Toyota
Camry: $31,560
Honda
CR-V: $32,095
Hyundai
Sonata: $33,035
Toyota
Rav4: $33,180
Mazda
Mazda6: $33,495
Hyundai
Tucson: $33,535
Kia
Optima: $35,440
The
S60 would have been around $24k with 30k miles, if I could find one
with all the right options. The difficulty of that, along with the
questionable local Volvo dealer (for service), forced me to nix that
option.
Subaru
and Honda offer AEB on most trims of their midsize cars (Legacy and
Accord). Subaru has offered it for years and is on the second
generation of their technology, while this is Honda’s first year to
offer it (though Acura has offered what I assume is the same system
for some time). Subaru's SUVs are also reasonably priced with
Eyesight, but we already have a small SUV in our home. I don't need
that capability, and moving to an SUV invariably causes handling and
gas mileage to suffer relative to the car version of the same
platform. Also I hated the programming of the Forester's CVT. So the
Forester and Outback were out.
Ultimately
for me it
came down to a Subaru Legacy, Honda Accord, or Mazda 6. The Mazda was
a stretch because getting AEB required that I go with the top trim
level and then add on a Technology Package, pushing the price way
over $30k. However, I loved my Mazda 3, so it was tempting. Honda had
the cheapest option, an Accord LX, but
I decided that was too spartan for me (some features I missed:
adequately
adjustable
driver’s seat, decent
stereo, blind spot monitoring).
My option then
became the EX trim, at $28,215. The Accord was a good option, and I
test drove it a couple times. But I preferred the Legacy's interior
(more room and a more pleasant design) and price, so I
finally went with a Subaru Legacy 2.5i Premium with the Eyesight
package.
