LIKES
- Standard active safety
- Same for all-wheel drive
- Expansive interior room
- Big 11.6-inch touchscreen
- Strong value
DISLIKES
- Pricey turbo-4...
- ...that’s meh on mileage
- Not quite sporty
- Bland shape
- Big touchscreen’s layout
BUYING TIP
The 2022 Subaru Legacy takes a pass on performance, but aces its safety and value tests.
What kind of car is the 2022 Subaru Legacy? What does it compare to?
The 2022 Subaru Legacy sedan may give up the foot traffic to the popular Outback wagon across the showroom floor, but it shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s an excellent value, one stacked with features such as standard all-wheel drive, and it’s as composed as an overture on the road. It’s the car version of Midwestern nice—appropriate, since it’s made in Indiana.
Is the 2022 Subaru Legacy a good car?
The 2022 Legacy earns a TCC Rating of 7.2 out of 10. With a glint of personality in its shape, it would top our family-sedan scoring.
What’s new for the 2022 Subaru Legacy?
Other than a few minor features changed or added, nothing. The Legacy still slips through the air with sober lines and a polished cabin, and with standard all-wheel drive and an available 11.6-inch touchscreen as its trump cards over rivals.
With space for five adults and 15.1 cubic feet of trunk space, the 2022 Legacy can handle nearly any family-sedan chore without complaint. Cloth seats with power adjustment hit a sweet spot, but the high-dollar Touring XT’s cooled nappa leather seats deliver hours of interstate comfort, too.
Subaru outfits the Legacy with standard automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, and active lane control. Blind-spot monitors and rear automatic emergency braking appear on the options sheet, and the top trim sports a front-facing camera for incident-free parking.
How much does the 2022 Subaru Legacy cost?
At least $23,955 for the base Legacy—but that’s all you really need to spend since it comes with active safety gear and smartphone compatibility. We’d pay $26,205 for the Legacy Premium’s 11.6-inch touchscreen and add on blind-spot monitors, but we’d pass on the $37,155 Legacy Touring XT’s turbo engine, cooled leather front seats, and forward-facing camera.
Where is the 2022 Subaru Legacy made?
In Lafayette, Indiana—also home to the Outback wagon (and Purdue University and Axl Rose, make of that what you will).
Styling
The Legacy’s flawlessly anonymous.
Is the Subaru Legacy a good-looking car?
Tasteful to a fault, the Legacy earns a 5 for styling, straight up the middle.
The Legacy blends into the background among radically styled rivals like the Kia K5 and Toyota Camry. Its grille splits in half with a decorous band of chrome; its LED headlights take on a modest size and shape and tuck into the car’s corners like hospital sheets. The cabin and roofline have straightforward shapes, while the taillights adopt perfectly clean and regular outlines.
The shield-like design of the Legacy’s dash leaves controversy in the unread folder, too. An available 11.6-inch touchscreen shakes up the shapes a little, but otherwise it’s a business-as-usual environment that’s elevated mainly by the extra attention paid to texture and trim. This is the nicest Legacy interior ever, softer and plusher and prettier; it’s just not memorable.
Performance
The Legacy tames bumpy roads as it constantly tackles the traction question.
Subaru sells the 2022 Legacy with a flat-4, with or without turbocharging, and an automatic. It’s a recipe for anonymous performance, but in Subaru’s hands it’s like no-knead bread: uncomplicated, simple, and tasty. We give it a point above average for its buttery ride, for a 6 in performance.
Is the Subaru Legacy 4WD?
Every Legacy comes with all-wheel drive.
Not very fast, especially in base versions—but its adequate performance leaves little to be desired. It’s a family sedan, after all, and a 182-hp 2.5-liter flat-4 serves up all the acceleration it needs for its transportation chores. The 260-hp 2.4-liter turbo-4 in the Limited XT can hustle to 60 mph in about six seconds, if that’s a requirement; it’s quick without the frantic responses of highly tuned cars like Subaru’s own WRX, but still costs the Legacy at the gas pump.
The Legacy’s CVT, its paddle shifters and simulated gear ratios, and perky throttle tuning work well together at low speeds and don’t feel drained at a 75-mph clip. The CVT doesn’t have the rubber-band effect that frustrates most transmissions of its kind, and Subaru’s all-wheel drive lends it a stable, well-planted feel and traction in all kinds of foul conditions.
Steering isn’t the Legacy’s finest mechanical function. It’s light, almost devoid in feel, and doesn’t build up force in a linear way. But the sedan’s ride is stellar. It leans very little into corners, pounces on all four feet to slip along ribbons of rural roads, and holds its well-tuned attitude long after the pavement loses it. It would be even better if the front-strut/rear-multilink setup round down the bounding over high-speed bumps—and if the 17- and 18-inch wheels offered more grippy tires to take advantage of its natural composure.
Comfort & Quality
Five adults will fit in fine fettle in the Legacy.
Almost a large car by EPA standards, the 2022 Legacy has a great place for you to sit, whether it’s in front or in back. It’s an 8 for utility, with points for good front seats, good trunk space, and room for five.
Wide, well-cushioned front seats come with cloth upholstery and a good range of adjustment on the base Legacy, while top models add power, heat, nappa leather, and extendable thigh cushions. The ample space around the front seats gets carved into small-item storage, which has some foibles—including a bin too small to hold today’s biggest smartphones.
Wide rear doors ease access to a back bench seat big enough for three adults, so long as their work uniforms don’t have numbers and names and helmets. Space is generous at about 40 inches of leg room, though head room suffers in comparison with the related Outback wagon.
The Legacy cabin is tightly composed and well trimmed, though not overtly luxurious. Limited XT and Touring XT cars have thicker side glass that damps even more noise, already a stronger suit of this Subaru compared with its loud and thrashy predecessors.
Safety
The best Legacy this sedan passes on is safety.
How safe is the Subaru Legacy?
We give the Legacy a 10 for safety, thanks to its good outward vision and its spotless crash-test record.
The IIHS calls it a Top Safety Pick+, while the NHTSA gives the Legacy sedan five stars in every crash test it performs or calculates.
Features
Big touchscreens and leather nudge the Legacy toward luxury.
The 2022 Legacy has excellent standard equipment, good infotainment, and strong value. We give it an 8 for features, noting its average 3-year/36,000-mile warranty and thin options list.
The base $23,955 2022 Legacy throws off value like LEDs throw off light. It gains 17-inch alloy wheels this year, to go with its twin 7.0-inch infotainment and vehicle-function screens, not to mention Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. You don’t need to spend a dime more.
Which Subaru Legacy should I buy?
How much is a fully loaded Subaru Legacy?
Subaru sells Sport, Limited, Limited XT, and Touring XT editions. The $37,155 Legacy Touring XT dolls itself up with the turbo-4 engine, navigation, nappa leather upholstery, heated and cooled front seats, 18-inch wheels, thicker sound-insulating front windows, the larger 11.6-inch touchscreen, and a forward-facing camera.
Subaru’s tablet-style touchscreen isn’t exactly a portrait-style screen like those found in Volvos and Teslas and Fords. Functions are arrayed in bands, with some hard buttons for core vehicle functions. As a result, the CarPlay and Android interfaces shrink to fit in a screen-within-a-screen format that’s a little janky.
Fuel Economy
The Legacy’s fuel economy is better than average.
Is the Subaru Legacy good on gas?
Both of its powertrains are rated at 25 mpg or higher, so we give the 2022 Legacy a green score of 6. Base models earn EPA ratings of 27 mpg city, 35 highway, 30 combined with their flat-4 engine, while turbo-4 versions are pegged at 24/32/27 mpg. No plug-in hybrid model is offered.
0 comments:
Post a Comment