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What is it?

Subaru’s new diesel-powered Legacy has finally touched down in the UK, adding the prospect of 45mpg to Subaru’s traditional values of permanent four-wheel drive and extreme utility.

The new engine has already won rave reviews thanks to its combination of 148bhp and near class-leading fuel economy: the claimed 49.6mpg is exceptional for a vehicle fitted with permanent four-wheel drive.

What’s it like?

In a word: brilliant. The new engine is a gem...Read the full article

Seriously considering one of these, as at first glance it appears to be what I want and good value. But there don't seem likely to be any deals, and residuals for the petrol ones are poor, meaning that overall costs may be high.
 
What do people reckon the depreciation on these will be like?  

I have bought the Outback version for the better ground clearance required for my forestry work. This is my 8th Subaru and as always it does at least what it says on the tin. First week I drove 1,200 miles to Wales and back including over 100 miles on forestry roads mostly in 2nd gear. Average fuel consumption 44.5mpg.

The second tank of fuel is now showing 49.8 mpg including some off road work. My latest run from Callender to Edinburgh and back including twice round the city street shows 52.5 mpg. This is quite fabulous and fully justifies the sales pitch. The engine is so quiet at cruising speeds turning only 2,000 rpm at 70mph.

At £10k less than an Allroad this has to be a bargain. I've driven over 750,000 miles in Subarus and not yet had a failure, I do not expect that to change either. Brillliant. 

Glad you are enjoying it.  The consumption is somewhat better than my Spec B's 22-24!

I think the residuals of the diesel will be quite a bit better than the petrol ones but it really depends on how long you plan to keep it.

I keep my cars for so long that it doesn't really matter.

 Thanks for the comments chaps. It's good to know that it really does provide 50mpg. I'll probably keep it 5 years so depreciation isn't a huge issue.

I have now covered nearly 14,000 miles in my 2.0D REN since taking delivery in July 2008.

I love driving the car - performance and handling are just great. I averaged 43.2mpg during the first 10,000 miles, an average that was affected quite considerably by a couple of long trips with bicycles on the roof. So far, I am averaging 44.4mpg since the 10,000 mile mark. (Be warned - the trip computers reset after 10,000 miles). 55mpg is easily achieved on a motorway run at 70mph.

The 12,000 mile service was a pleasant, hassle-free experience, and I have had no mechanical problems with the car.

My only gripes relate to the navigation software. The navigation system on my previous car (2004 Honda Accord Diesel) took ages to compute a route, but did at least provide sensible answers. The Legacy seems to come up with (three) routes in a flash, all of them sub-optimum! If you set a waypoint to give the system a bit of a hint, the distance and duration of the "fastest" route can be improved considerably. Never mind, it's usually not until the end of a journey that the navigation system is useful.

On a similar vein (and possibly related), the journey time estimation is hopelessly pessimistic. On my Honda, I could manually set average speeds for three classes of road, but the Legacy seems to use a fixed speed, or maybe overall average speed, for all journeys - useless on motorway trips. Also, the Honda could be set to show useful places like petrol stations on its map, but not so on the Legacy. Finally, on the Honda you could switch off the LCD display entirely, but this is not possible on the Legacy: It can be quite annoying at night.

In short: Nice car; shame about the software.

My Outback is approaching 1 year old and has 21,500 miles on the clock. The last 9,500 miles show an average of 49.2mpg. The engine is running smoothly; uses a bit of oil but loves revs when speed is required. My only bugbear is that the low rev torque is poor and it is easy to get caught out and stall. That said it is hard to fault and the economy is as good as promised.

My Legacy ReN has now done 22000 miles at an average (tank to tank,not trip) of 48.9.

Car has broken down 3 times with turbo pipe blowing off - now fixed.

Navigation is awful - goes blank on cold mornings after about 10 minutes and the  route options are poor. Worst aspect is telling you to turn left or right whilst just indicating a sharp bend with a minor (often very) road joining your main road.

Built in Bluetooth mobile phone kit is equally poor - now use a TomTom and vizor mounted Bluetooth - car is great, but do not buy the navigation.

Tried having the engine chipped - extra torque caused the dual mass flywheel to vibrate in the higher gears with anything other than minimum throttle - felt enough to make the door mirrors fall off -  I decided problem was so bad that I returned car to standard although there is obviously terrific potential, as while chip was fitted, if I only used full throttle above 2000 rpm and in the lower gears car went like an Sti.