Date: Months in Fleet: Current Mileage: 34,154 miles
Average Fuel Economy: Average Range: Service: Normal Wear: Repair: The last time we checked in with our long-term , the car was dragging its feet a little (or maybe that was our staff dragging its feet), having taken nine months to accumulate 23,212 miles. That pace continued until February, when we started to exercise the Subaru a little more. In the past three months, we’ve spun the Legacy’s odometer another 9000 miles toward our 40,000-mile endgame, with three trips to Wisconsin, one to New York, and a roughly 2000-mile looper out east to visit colleges in D.C., Baltimore, New York, Providence, and Boston.
These mass-mileage accumulations have given us ample time to enjoy what the Legacy does best: cruise. A big, soft car, the comfortable Subie is at its best on the highway, when driver and passengers can settle into its cushy seats and let the miles pass. The tilting and (generously) telescoping steering wheel helps everybody find a comfortable driving position, and the tall greenhouse lends the interior an airy feel—as well as providing outstanding visibility all around. We were happy to see the last of the snow melt away, too, which allowed us to slap the all-season Bridgestone Turanzas back on, curing the high-speed wander the car suffered at the hands of its snowshoes.
Keep It Down in There The downside to the tire swap is that, as we previously noted, the Turanzas are loud. The noise is amplified by a lack of sound-deadening between the wheels and cabin, as most suspension impacts are heard inside more than they are felt. They’re loud enough that a couple of staffers have nervously noted that something might be wrong with the car’s suspension, but our dealer assures us the car is not making any “abnormal noises.” We guess these are normal, then. Here’s an easy suggestion for an incremental model-year update, Subaru: more sound insulation in the wheel wells.
An equally persistent but more troubling problem is the way the Legacy’s steering wheel quivers at highway speeds. We meant to ask about the problem at our last service stop, but, well, it’s less noticeable with the softer winter tires on the car, and it slipped through the cracks. The car’s final service while in our care is a couple thousand miles away; we now have a sticky note on the bathroom mirror reminding ourselves to have the dealer look into it then.
Subaru’s every-7500-mile service schedule trades off simple oil changes and inspections with deeper dives. As a result, the bills for these services alternate between $65 or so and, well, more. The 30,000-mile service was a biggie, at $326 for an oil change, brake-system flush, tire rotation, and new air filters for the engine and cabin. A few thousand miles later, we took the car to our local rubber purveyor to have a leak in one of the rear tires checked out, and we walked out with two new doughnuts. (To ease strain on the all-wheel-drive system, when you replace one tire, you should replace the other on that axle.) That bill came to $295, our largest unplanned expense for the car.
Badge of Long-Term Caretakership We did a little customizing of our extended-stay Subaru, tacking onto its tail a tale written with the
icons, a set of small plastic pictograms depicting various activities with which Subaru assumes its owners busy themselves. We laid the tablets out in random order and then came up with a story represented by that arrangement. Several readers accepted our challenge to propose alternate arrangements for the pictograms, but we eventually decided to go with associate online editor David Gluckman’s heartwarming story: Robotic dog who loves nature tickles a passing cyclist and photographs him under a rainbow. This act earns the robotic dog a real heart, which somehow leads to a love of snow sports. On his favorite mountain, he digs a ditch to bury a long-suffering Nissan Leaf and subsequently wins a prize for his autobiographical musical of this same story. (If none of that makes any sense to you, click
to read about the badge of ownership.)
In spite of the quivering steering wheel, few other (reasonably priced) cars in our long-term fleet are as satisfying for long trips. Extended hours behind the wheel, however, do give drivers lots of time to find nits to pick, and this car presents a few obvious ones. Most nav and infotainment systems block out some functions while the car is in motion—all the better to deflect lawsuits, my dear—but Subaru’s lawyers seem to have a bit more sway than most other companies allow their legal counsel. You cannot enter a destination while driving, and you can’t even select previous destinations while under way. Beyond that, if, say, you’re halfway to a destination and want to search for gas near your current location—a far-fetched concept, we know—the system will only search for gas stations near your destination, not at the current location. So you have to pull over and stop the car to gain full access to the nav controls, cancel routing, find a gas station nearby, get there, and then be sure to program in your previous destination, lest you accidentally start driving again and lock out that functionality. Additionally, a system such as this that forces the driver to load different DVDs for different regions of the country is, in the words of one driver, “a primitive requirement in 2011.”
Other, more frequently needed functions of the infotainment system have also bristled various editors. Prime example: Subaru won’t let anyone adjust the stereo’s equalizer while the car is in motion. One of our long-haulers concluded, “The whole nav and infotainment interface is a mess. It makes the original iDrive seem like a model of intuitive simplicity.” We know that nav systems are far from daily use for most people, but a system this obstinate makes an even better case than usual for an aftermarket unit you can remove from the car when it’s not needed.
Of course, when we know where we’re going, we’re pretty happy with the Legacy. Its mileage accumulation might be speeding up, but nobody here is eager to see the Legacy’s stay come to a close.
Article source: http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/car/10q2/2010_subaru_legacy_3.6r_limited-long-term_road_test_update
