Junkyard Find: 1991 Subaru Legacy L Sedan
Junked AMC Eagles are plentiful in Denver-area self-service wrecking yards, but nowhere near as common as the cars that took AMC’s four-wheel-drive-car concept and ran with it: Subarus. I see incredible quantities of Subarus around here, but one thing I don’t see often is a non-wagon Subaru Legacy. Even rarer in these parts is the front-wheel-drive Legacy sedan. That makes this ’91 a noteworthy Junkyard Find, at least by Denver standards.
Just 70 more miles and it would have made 200,000! The prime suspect: head gasket.
You could still buy seriously weird Subarus in the early 1990s (e.g., the final XT and first SVX), but the Legacy was de-weirdifying at a rapid clip.
You’ll find on in every car, kid. You’ll see.
Touring Bruce. You figure it out.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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During the 91-92 recession, the Subaru plant in Indiana was storing unsold Legacys in Kenosha WI, near 200 miles away! When they ditched FWD only and added "Outback" trim, then sales went up. And yeah the FWD only cars were not an 'experiment', and can't be blamed for quality issues.
And another thing, look at the interior. After 200K miles, it is trashed, and needs new everything. And, you're not going to find pristine interior parts in 'pick and pulls' too easy. Have to do 'flea-Bay' and pay Barrett-Jackson collector car prices. So, in this case, car was done for this world and no need to 'save' it.