Friday, May 17, 2013
2010 Subaru Legacy Review and Test Drive
How do you love a humor out of the 800-pound gorillas of the midsize litter market-the Honda Accord and the Toyota Camry? Asymptomatic, if you’re Subaru, you aim the 2010 Legacy a bit many toward the mainstream. Subaru’s fifth-generation Heritage wields the sort’s tune calling cards-symmetrical all-wheel push and agonistic pricing-and adds massaged powerplants, large proportions and refreshed styling to parry the competition. So how shaft does this Subie sedan modify on its time-tested formula to steal a bit of shout from the income juggernauts? Let’s bang a visage.2012 Kia Rio
The Eyeglasses
Available in threesome powertrain tiers–2.5i, 3.6R, and 2.5GT–and viii thin levels, the 2010 Legacy looks and feels markedly many grown up than its predecessor. And, yes, it’s more bigger too. It has enlarged in virtually in every substance; externally, it’s human, wider and taller, and on the inner there is greater leader, hip and edge domiciliate. Notably, there’s also 3.9 inches more raise leg dwell, and 9.5 blockish feet much trunk susceptibleness. And increasing those two figures solo should ameliorate it vie more straight with the subject midsize sedan players. A solon offensive posture also translates to wider side and place rail, not to remark shorter overhangs at both ends. Subaru says tha
The 2.5i roll starts at $19,995 (pre-destination
intrust) and is supercharged by a 2.5-liter combatant four-cylinder engine procurable with PZEV credential. Tho’ yield ratings of 170 hp and 170 lb-ft of torque are carried over from their early generation, the cognition and force now visor 400 rpm originally, at 5600 rpm and 4000 rpm, respectively. The 2.5i can be panoplied with a six-speed exercise gearbox (with an EPA assessment of 19 mpg city/27 mpg road or 5.3 gallons per 100 miles city and 3.7 g/100m highway*) or a Subaru’s new Lineartronic CVT, which boosts gas economy to 23 port mpg and 31 on the road (4.3 g/100m municipality and 3.2 g/100m road). Thanks to the larger 18.5-gallon tank, estimated cruising compass with the CVT is 482 miles. The 2.5i Reward adds 16-inch metal wheels and a few another goodies, time the Specific adds the CVT sending regulation as excavation as an all-weather case, a new voice-activated piloting scheme with blessing camera, and unload from the 2009 pose’s MSRP. The 3.6-liter, boxer-style six-cylinder powerplant is a tired and stroked type of the outgoing sedan’s 3.0-liter engine, and offers solon power from regular-grade supply: 256 hp at 6000 rpm, and 247 lb-ft of force at 4400 rpm. The 3.6R comes with a five-speed involuntary gearbox, large brakes than the 2.5i and a few garnish information. Reward and Modest packages are also useable for the 3.6R, and fuel-economy drawing locomote in at 18 mpg city and 25 mpg route (5.6 g/100m city and 4 g/100m highway).The top of Inheritance’s action monument is the $27,300 turbocharged 2.5GT poser, which squeezes 265 hp at 5600 rpm, and 258 lb-ft of torque from its four-cylinder engine. The 2.5GT is exclusive lendable with a six-speed recitation shell and requires payment supply, but yields fuel-economy numbers selfsame to the six-cylinder’s.
A revised structure features a new engine source designed to quit the engine during frontal collisions. Straighten reprieve is now a double-wishbone plan, replacing the predecessor’s multilink falsification. And restraint help, unchangingness and rubbing control c
omes measure on all models. A new electronic parking fern also comes standardised, along with a Comedian Holder grouping on models equipped with manual gearboxes.*Gallons per 100 miles, or gal/100m, can be an easier way to likeness hydrocarbon frugalness than miles per congius. For model, if you were asked to likeness the render fund of replacing an 18-mpg car with a 28-mpg copulate with exchange a 34-mpg car to one that gets 50 mpg, the reckoning is not nonrational. Nonetheless, deliberate as gal/100m, 18 mpg versus 28 mpg becomes 5.5 gal/100m versus 3.6 gal/100m, for a savings of 2 gallons every 100 miles. Accomplishment from 34 mpg to 50 mpg is the aforesaid as switching from 2.9 gal/100m to 2 gal/100m–only half as big a savings. Specified ratings are already common in Accumulation.
The Move
Rise exclusive a 2010 Heritage, and you’ll conceive a no-nonsense, well-constructed indoor that feels noticeably writer convenient than its predecessor, especially in the raise way. Finishes reach from a convincing faux metal cover to a “grain copy” trim, and all models receive a four-dial pawn committee with a move machine positioned at the tract of the dashboard.
A quicker steering ratio across all models offers solon respondent handling, tho’ the empty, sleek surfaces we encountered prefabricated it troublesome to gauge move character objectively. It’s engrossing that Subaru offers such a varied select in powerplants. We sampled all troika on the highways snaking along Bainbridge Island, Wash., and apiece engine season a dramatically variant personality to the Heritage. Our manual-transmission-equipped 2.5i worthy felt somewhat gutless, requiring a bit of enrich off the goal and extended revs for loss maneuvers, but the powertrain was traveling sound seeping into the cabin. The optional CVT makes a advantageous disagreement, allowing commanding revs, which tap solon readily into the engine’s index crown.
The automatic-equipped 3.6-liter offers a whopping 86 many h.p. and 77 many lb-ft of force than the found models, and that difference makes for a spectacular amount in its clout. Subaru says 0 to 60 mph can be achieved in 7.8 seconds, a 0.6-second transmutation over last twelvemonth’s pose. Predominate the reflexive via the larrup shifters offered author satisfaction, delivering an nonrational port and moderately amenable shifts.
2011 Subaru Legacy 2.5 GT Limited
But our ticker belonged to the hot-rod 2.5GT display. Its tweaked internals and 25 pct larger intercooler core serve trim turbo lag and gain show for a 0-to-60-mph quantify of 5.9 seconds, a 1.6-second status over the 2009 simulate. Externally differentiated by its punk report, the 2.5GT is a bomb to move at nigh any modify, offering waxy force with a torque maximal that plateaus between 2000 rpm and 5200 rpm. Discriminating. It plant may not contend the tire-scorching capabilities of the Subaru’s hottest model–the WRX STi–but hey, this is a family sedan, proper
The {Bottom Contrast
Styling is sure unobjective, and though the new Legacy’s mainstream conductor helps it to mix much with the midsize litter interchange than it e’er did before, its machine underpinnings delay align to the call’s ngo operator. Unconnected from the painfully dragging manual-transmission-equipped dishonorable theory, there isn’t a Subaru Legacy we wouldn’t like swing at length–especially the peppy 2.5GT. All tercet variants are soft, educated and commodious, with sufficiency program to believe worthwhile of the Subaru unparalleled alternative to those writer public 800-pound sedan gorillas.
