It’s official. Subaru has announced that production of the Legacy midsize sedan will end in Spring 2025 after 36 years of production. Yep, the archetypal all-wheel-drive midsize sedan is set to saunter off into the sunset, marking another departure from the world we’re used to. For decades, the Legacy embodied Subaru’s persona of slightly quirky all-weather Japanese cars, and I reckon its death could be the canary in the coal mine if Subaru doesn’t act fast.
See, you can only hold a competitive advantage for so long, and the world seems to have caught up to Subaru. In a few short years, don’t be surprised if the industry’s further still down the road – and if Subaru doesn’t change soon – the brand finds itself lost in the dust. After all, the things that make a Subaru a Subaru seem to be growing less and less important.
Over the past, say, thirty-plus years, Subaru has staked its technological identity on two things: all-wheel-drive and safety. For the longest while, if you wanted an all-wheel-drive car, you needed a Subaru or an Audi and that was that. However, the tides are changing, and the shoreline is receding. Nowadays, you can get any number of normal passenger cars with some form of all-wheel-drive. The Mazda 3, the Toyota Corolla, the Kia K5, the Nissan Altima, and the Toyota Camry can all be optioned to send some torque to the rear tires.
However, people are buying more crossover utility vehicles than sedans, and that’s a slight problem because basically all CUVs are available with all-wheel-drive. Sure, the Chevrolet Trax, Buick Envista, Hyundai Venue, and outgoing Nissan Kicks are two-wheel-drive machines, but those are single cells of the great organism that is the CUV segment.
Granted, not all all-wheel-drive systems are created equally, but thanks to faster processing and more sophisticated algorithms, reactive all-wheel-drive systems are really closing the perceptible gap with all-wheel-drive systems that always send torque to both axles. Plus, an all-wheel-drive system is only as good as its differentials, and since most systems including most Subaru systems use open front and rear differentials, controlling wheelspin caused by cross-axle traction imbalances falls to traction control systems and tire grip.
Oh, and that’s before we even get into electric vehicles. The Subaru Solterra is much like any dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric crossover with a drive unit on the front axle and another on the rear. Functionally, it works on exactly the same principles as all-wheel-drive in a Tesla Model Y, Volkswagen ID.4, Ford Mustang Mach-E, or Hyundai Ioniq 5. If EV mandates keep up, Subaru’s “Symmetrical All-Wheel-Drive” marketing advantage will largely be wiped out in essentially two model cycles.
Alright, so even if EV mandates go to plan and Subaru’s all-wheel-drive advantage slides off the table, that still leaves safety, right? Well, not so fast. It wasn’t that long ago when new cars weren’t achieving top marks in moderate overlap crash testing, but now pretty much everything aces the moderate frontal overlap test and most new cars do brilliantly on the more severe small overlap test. From Mazda to Toyota to Hyundai, it’s not hard to find other automakers scoring just as well as Subaru. Once everything’s safe, what’s the difference?
If you remove Symmetrical all-wheel-drive, the flat-four engine, and even a cut-and-dry safety advantage, what makes a Subaru a Subaru? It definitely isn’t motorsports anymore, which begs the question: Is marketing enough alone? While some people will definitely continue to buy Subarus for the image, those who believe in the technology may grow to be disappointed, and those who’ve been burned by odd problems will continue to share their stories. Should this industry-wide switch to even primarily battery electric power happen, Subaru will need to think on its feet.
The Subaru Legacy may be officially on the way out, but Subaru’s own legacy hangs in the balance of changing technologies. How it chooses to reinvent itself in the face of electrification could decide whether the automaker sinks or swims. Is a lifeguard on duty?
I recently wrote a review on the Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness, and while I didn’t like the CVT, I didn’t like the interior quality, and I implied that it feels like an all-wheel drive economy car on stilts, I acknowledged that it still had soul. And that’s the thing: People often buy cars not because of the hardware, but because of styling and marketing.
I mean, look at Jeep. Aside from the Wrangler, how is their Grand Cherokee any different than say, a Touareg or a Volvo XC90? How are the Renegade and Compass any different than all the other all-wheel drive crossovers? And yet, still folks buy them because they’re Jeeps, and also because of their styling, which tells a story that Jeep’s marketing team has carefully crafted over the last seven decades.
Ditto for Subaru. I will acknowledge that there seem to be more and more competitors these days (the newest CX-5 comes standard with all-wheel drive), and there will be more as the EV-era ramps up (adding all-wheel drive to EVs is trivial compared to adding it to a gas car), but I think styling and marketing will continue the Subaru cult for years to come.
-David Tracy
(Photo credits: Subaru)
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