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.