2010 Subaru Legacy 2.5i Review
It's a good think Subaru makes it out there on their own set of virtues like affordable all-wheel drive, a boxer engine and basically being the Swedish car of Japan because their cabin tech is not where they shine at least not in the 2010 Legacy without spending a lot of additional money. Let's check the tech if we can find any. Our Legacy is a base car 2.5i in ruby red peal. The styling is thoroughly look alike on the outside looking like what you might call a Camry 6. But if the outside is boring, boarding on pathetic with those tacked on doorsill ground affects moldings, the inside is much more refined and this cabin speaks to being the car for grownups.
Now the first thing I noticed inside this 2010 Legacy was not the cabin tech but there's damn little of it, but the style of the interior is really quite nice. Good materials all around, no hard plastics, at least not many unless they're posing as foe brushed aluminum which is a pretty good looking finish but they've really brought this car up. Nice looking instrument panel, you've got an eyebrow display up here with some key information on them. Overall it's a very grown up car and in the past I always felt that Subaru's were a little agrarian inside if you will, but no this is a nice looking car head to head with an Accord or a Camry, nothing to apologize for, except when you come to the tech and then it's got a lot to apologize for
Here's the base head unit, its AM/FM single slot CD. It does digest MP3 and WMA disks, no big deal. No HD radio. Satellite radio here is ambidextrous on Subaru's you can option XM or Sirius they're different ala carte options to put on top of this head unit. You do have an aux jack which is accessed underneath the CD control and that's your basic mini jack down here in the console. But what's frustrating on this car is the good stuff isn't available unless you get a Legacy Premium which is a higher priced car overall by like $5,000.00. You can't even option in a Harmon-Kardon audio system, a navigation unit, a whole lot of the niceties are relegated to higher trim levels. I don't like that it should make that available to anybody who wants to take a base car but give it good tech. That said you can nickel and dime your way into some important upgrades. Once called the media hub, it's a USB jack that will of course take USB drives and connect to your iPod and bring that up on the display in a way that I can't describe to you because we don't' have it on our car. Also you can get that media hub with A2DP Bluetooth streaming. I would do that for 50 bucks more, absolutely.
On these low trim cars that don't have Bluetooth you can get an optional unit that goes up here on the headliner called a Blue connect module which has mic, speakers and all the buttons up here. It's kind of a factory approved after market piece. They look good; they work well but again not really integrated like it could be. There's also an ala carte sub woofer, kind of a pancake powered sub that can go underneath the seat. This work pretty well as well but again you’ve got to put a lot of pieces together and you're not really improving the head unit you're just grafting stuff onto it.
Our car has the optional CVT. It's got a manual shifting gate over here, paddles on the wheel to go with it. Now being as we've got a fairly pedestrian Legacy, we get a fairly pedestrian engine. This is one of Subaru's boxers but it's a flat 4, not the flat 6 available on the higher trim car, not the turbo flat 4 available on a higher trim car, just a plain old fuel injected flat 4. As a result it's a little bit of a farm implement but it's a good motor make no doubt about it, but it's not really a sporting motor to my taste. Good numbers though, 170 horsepower, 170 foot pounds of torque. It's just more of a transportation motor than a driving motor but not bad.
The bottom 3 Legacies all have the 2 1/2 liter flat 4 with either a base 6-speed manual or optional CVT. Get the CVT for 2 reasons. This engine is not exactly Swiss watch like so revving it is no particular joy and the MPG on the CDT car is much better. 23/31 versus 19/27 with a stick that CVT will pay for its $1000 cost rather decisively. As I mention these 2.5i legacies are not cars for people who love to drive. But they do have a certain upscale solidness that I’ve got to say I came to like.
Let's price a Subaru Legacy 2.5i. The base car is about 20 thousand 6 on top of that techy options that are nickel and dimey, 300 bucks for that media hub USB port, 350 if you want it with Bluetooth streaming duh. About 398 for satellite radio, 300 for the powered sub, another 400 bucks for that ceiling mounted Blue connect hands free rig, $1000.00 more for the CVT. Given the nature of this car and the significant MPG improvement, I'd go for it. Now if you want a navigation rig in this car from the factory you've got to spend 5,000 more to get the limited edition with a lot of non tech stuff added in and then 3,000 more to get the navigation and power sunroof package.
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