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I'm Back! With a 2020 Legacy XT Touring


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Back a few years I had a 2005 Legacy GT wagon. I loved that car, but business demands required I move on. Now it's a few years later and there's a turbo Legacy again, so I bought a 2020 Legacy XT Touring in white.

 

I just filled up the tank after driving 380 miles. Here are some initial thoughts.

 

Interior Quality: It's good! The Touring leather is very nice. The color is interesting and people who get in the car always comment about it. It looks and feels good. I hope it wears well.

 

I love the steering wheel. The leather covering is kind of sand-papery, much grippier than the slicker leather in my 2015 WRX. I love it.

 

I do sometimes accidentally hit the downshift button when I mean to change the info on the dash. Both those controls are finger-tip access on the left side of the back of the wheel.

 

The seats are good. There's plenty of adjustments, and I don't feel tired even after a long drive. The seats in the Touring are fan-cooled. When on max the fans make a lot of noise. That's weird. Otherwise I can't really tell that they are fan-cooled...

 

The trunk is really big! Hauls all my boxes of parts up to my store at the race track.

 

Info-tainment: The center screen is massive. Visually it's kind of a mess, but I've seen worse. I do like that you can just touch it, rather than have to navigate through it without an outboard control knob. But I feel like touch-screens in a car are a step backwards. If I am forced to take my eyes off the road to operate the car, that's not a good thing.

 

Someone else posted about the USB slots being hard to reach. I put in a tiny micro USB drive and almost had to resort to tweezers to remove it. Oh, and while I'm on that subject, you can tell it to shuffle your USB drive, but the next time you get in the car it will forget that and you'll have to tell it to shuffle again...

 

The Harman-Kardon sound system is solid. Gets plenty loud, sounds good for an OEM system.

 

Magic Driving Tech: The suite of driver aids in this car is pretty amazing. I recently drove an Audi RS5, and it had self-driving, lane-centering, slow-down-all-the-way-to-zero cruise control, all that. I thought it was cool, but hey, that car costs like $75,000, of course it does amazing things.

 

But really, the Legacy does all that stuff too, and at half the price. The lane-centering works quite well, the cruise control is kind of astounding, and it even tells you to keep your eyes on the road if you start staring at that attractive BRZ next to you.

 

I actually don't really want all this nanny-tech. I fear we are just becoming less involved with the car and it'll just allow us to let our attention wander even more. But hey, you can't stop progress. I am getting used to it.

 

I wish it had a birds-eye-view camera thing, where you can see the car and its surroundings as if from directly above the car. My wife's Nissan Leaf has that, and it's awesome for parking. But a front camera is better than nothing.

 

Performance: The handling is good for a semi-heavy car. It's no ATS-V or 3-series, but it's comfortable and I don't feel scared hustling it around a country road. I haven't really pushed the engine, since I'm still doing the break-in miles, but it feels strong enough for normal duty. The brakes also seem fine, although it's been a while (uh, maybe never) since I have owned a car with this much mass, and it doesn't stop as fast as some of my lighter cars.

 

The CVT is pretty good. Just as in the WRX, I thought I would hate it, but it's not bad, and I usually forget it's a CVT.

 

Exterior: Meh. This car is plain, plain, plain. Someone said "When did you get the grandpa car?" Yep, it looks like an Avalon. Maybe not the current Avalon, which is a little bit aggressive. That older one that nobody can remember seeing.

 

I am going to fit some 20" wheels for looks. If I can find some sport suspension from the JDM parts bin, I will add that too. I don't know if there will be a Cobb Accessport for the car, but I've put my vote in for one.

 

So those are my first thoughts. If you have questions, let me know. In a week or so I will have the car on the lift and will give some of my thoughts on the mechanicals of the car and about wheel/tire fitment.

 

Dan

Mach V

FastWRX.com

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Congrats on the car! I just got a limited myself. Where is the switch that controls the electric folding mirrors? I really miss having this feature. I lived in Japan for 4 years and the cheapest of cars had them there. It’s a shame those aren’t a standard feature.
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Congrats! From what I remember, the ventilated seats suck the air away from your ass. They don't blow your skirt up. Maybe that's why the fans are loud? Or maybe it's just the way it is... Either way, enjoy your new ride!
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Performance: The handling is good for a semi-heavy car. It's no ATS-V or 3-series, but it's comfortable and I don't feel scared hustling it around a country road. I haven't really pushed the engine, since I'm still doing the break-in miles, but it feels strong enough for normal duty. The brakes also seem fine, although it's been a while (uh, maybe never) since I have owned a car with this much mass, and it doesn't stop as fast as some of my lighter cars.

 

 

Well stated and accurate. I wish Subaru would come out with an XT with sport suspension. It could potentially be a BMW killer.

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Sweet! Maybe I'll see it next time I'm over to the shop, it probably won't blend in with the sportier cars :lol: Biggest turn off for me is the styling.. I'll never say it in person, but the 2020 OBXT looks good in comparison to the Legacy and I've never been a fan of the plastic cladding/roof rack. 5th gen for life!
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  • 2 weeks later...

Great to see Dan!

 

Cant wait to see a more long term review and very interested in the powertrain as my brother in law has the accent but thats a BIG vehicle.

 

Still remember the machv forums back in my dsm days

 

Dave

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Providing unmatched customer service and a Premium level of Dyno/E-tuning to the Community

 

cryotuneperformance@yahoo.com

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I'm still not sold on the CVT.

 

As long as you like it, that's all that matters for you. Congrats either way.

I don't love it. For normal, everyday use, it's totally fine. I don't find myself thinking about it. For sporty driving, not my favorite. It tends to seek the highest-horsepower RPM setting, which is pretty high up in the rev range, when if I was shifting it myself I might have it rev lower and lean on the torque more. You can use the flappy paddles to adjust that, but it drops out of that mode after a short time. Maybe I need to spend more time with the owner's manual to figure out the operation and user interface better.

 

Speaking of RTFM (Read The Manual...), I did figure something out that bothered me. The cruise control +/- buttons to change the cruise speed change the speed by 5 mph per press, which is just confusing and weird to me. I have never seen this in any car I ever owned. I guess it's because it has cruise control down to zero mph? Turns out (I learned from the owner's manual) if you press and HOLD the +/- buttons, you get adjustments in 1 mph increments, like I'm used to from other cars.

 

Dan

Mach V

FastWRX.com

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The cruise control +/- buttons to change the cruise speed change the speed by 5 mph per press, which is just confusing and weird to me. I have never seen this in any car I ever owned. I guess it's because it has cruise control down to zero mph? Turns out (I learned from the owner's manual) if you press and HOLD the +/- buttons, you get adjustments in 1 mph increments, like I'm used to from other cars.

 

It’s nice to see they carried this over from the 2019 models to the 2020 models. That’s how it works on our MY19 2019 Outback 3.6R. I found that it works much better than the two stage switch they had on our previous MY16 Liberty (Legacy) 3.6R.

 

It took me a little while to get used to how long to hold the button to increase/decrease by 1mph (1km/hr in our case). I found if I watch the ACC speed setting on the dash it was easy to know when to release the button. The one quick flick 5mph (5km/hr) increase/decrease is the nicest part.

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I'll have to check it out when I bring my GT in for an oil change. Are you going to mock up some Mach V Awesome Wheels on it?

If I can get some free tires to do it with. Most of the Mach V wheels we sell have WRX/STI-diameter tires on them. The Legacy has larger-diameter tires. I'd need to special-order tires in order to try the 18x9.5" wheels. I probably won't do that just to try the wheels on. It's possible we'll take some off a customer car at some point, though...

 

Dan

Mach V

FastWRX.com

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  • 2 weeks later...

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