Long-Term Test Verdict: 2005 Subaru Legacy 2.5 GT Limited

Close your eyes and think "Subaru." What do you see? Perhaps a late-model Sooby trundling across a sleety New England highway in the pit of December. Two hundred and fifty thousand miles on its odometer. Mud petrified on its flanks. A flinty Northeasterner behind the wheel who's wise enough to be driving a reliable car at a time like this.

You probably don't think of a red Legacy sedan sucking warm Southern California air into its hood-mounted air scoop as it turbocharges past startled BMWs beneath the sunshine and blurring palm trees of L.A. traffic. The car? Our long-term 2005 Subaru Legacy GT, which we've finally handed back to Subaru high command after completing its year-long suffering at the hands of hedonistic Motor Trend staffers who only know New Hampshire winters from Thomas Kincade postcards. All we're left with are 18,000 miles of anecdotes--and this question: Has Subaru lost its flinty Northeasterner soul, going for the performance gusto?

The Legacy GT had been an appealing proposition since its inception. Take a sturdy all-wheel-drive foundation dressed in casual-attire bodywork and quicken the pulse while keeping the visual impact faint enough not to give away the game when glimpsed in a rearview mirror.

That word "faint" tended to crop up quite a bit in response to our 2005 edition's $30,270 out-the-door price, which included a $575 destination charge and a single, $1200 manumatic transmission option. Yikes! Thirty grand for a four-cylinder Subaru? Who do you think you are, Mr. Legacy? A Lexus? Early in the car's stay, the sentiment was a drumbeat in the logbook: "$30,000-plus for a Subaru that doesn't say STi on the trunklid?" "My only gripe is the Legacy's as-tested sticker price is maybe $2000 above what I'd expect." "The price is risky. It's not much of a stretch to more premium nameplates like Acura's TSX or Saab's 9-3--although neither of them offers 250 horses and all-wheel drive."

That last point reminds us that, if you scratch beneath the GT's low-key looks, you'll find a machine unusually chockablock with interesting technical content, such as a boxer-configuration engine with variable-valve timing and an air-to-air intercooled turbocharger; a five-speed automatic directed by three shift strategies, or alternately, manumatic shift buttons a finger reach away on the wheel's spokes; and, of course, Fuji Heavy Industries's renowned AWD that variably distributes the engine's potential 250 pound-feet of torque to four stylish, 17x7.0-inch aluminum wheels.

All in all, a hardware tally worthy of the sticker price. And an interior upgrade that takes a Monty Python giant step toward Lexus levels of cosseting, including a moonroof, eight-way power driver's seat, leather-wrapped seats, steering wheel and shifter, and a six-CD in-dash player--and all assembled to a premium grade of fit and finish. Except, perhaps, for our GT's single trouble spot: the dual-zone climate-control system.

On a drive back to the L.A. basin from a Dave Matthews concert in San Francisco, the climate control suddenly went bipolar, flipping the temperature back and forth between hot and cold. This was brought to a mechanic's attention at the car's 15,000-mile service, where we were waved off with the ridiculous explanation that they all do that. Fortunately, at the next visit the problem was solved, with a tip from a reader who'd experienced the same temperature flip-flopping while driving on, strangely enough, the very same piece of roadway. So if you're driving from San Fran to L.A. and your climate control gets flippy, tell the mechanic to check the rpm sensor on the A/C's compressor.

Another sour note was the rear-window's heating elements interfering with radio reception. Both wonkies were attended to under warranty, both cost zip to cure, and neither reappeared. Unfortunately, what also didn't appear was notification of a potential issue with the deployment rate of our model's curtain airbags, which dealers have been instructed to replace free of charge.

The tires were a genuine area of debate, some finding their all-season spec a choke-collar on the car's ultimate handling potential ("C'mon, give us a sport package that makes this a real street performer"), others countering that "what good's a Subaru that can't scat for the mountains at first snow fall?" Indisputably, they hamper the car's dry braking distances, 142 feet from 60 mph and 416 from 100 mph being eye-opening numbers. And all agreed the Bridgestone RE 92s were loud as delivered and only increased their howl as they wore. "It's a decent highway car except for the loud low-profile tires." Nevertheless, the GT-unique quicker 15:1 steering ratio affords the Legacy crisp turn-in at anywhere up to BMW-trailing cornering rates.

If you contrast the Legacy GT's straight-line performance (6.4 seconds to 60) with its peerless aptitude in the inclement, there's not much out there that fits this Subaru's portfolio--sans perhaps Audi's A4 2.0T quattro. Our car averaged 18.7 mpg running on its premium fuel, burning 995 gallons over its 18,651-mile visit (at today's dizzying price of premium, that's about $3200). According to our partners at Intellichoice, in the resale market our 20-month-old GT would fetch an impressive $27,005 retail, equating to a depreciation of $3265, or 10.8 percent over its stay. Add in $172 for maintenance costs (oil and filter changes, mainly), and you have a cost per mile of 35c at today's gas prices. That's on the cheap end of some of our recent long-termers, which have ranged from a pocket-empting $1.55 per mile for a Jag XJR to $0.08/mile for a Prius (helped by low fuel costs and virtually no depreciation). A recent comparison might be the similar $0.34/mile managed by a long-term Acura 3.2 TL.

Reasonably economical to operate, durable, and a blast to command anywhere from the Pacific Coast Highway to freshly blanketed ski resorts, the GT might even make a flinty Northeasterner crack a smile. It certainly did for us here--while shattering the notion that a Legacy can't be worth $30 grand.