Junkyard Find: 1999 Subaru Legacy SUS 30th Anniversary Edition
I live in Colorado, which means that my local junkyards offer a comprehensive history of just about every Subaru model sold since the dawn of the 1980s (and sometimes before then). One had evaded me for many years, though: the one-year-only Legacy SUS. Now I've found a genuine SUS within sight of Pikes Peak.
As the 21st century loomed, Subaru still hadn't quite settled on what to do with its increasingly popular Outback name. There was an Impreza Outback starting with the 1995 model year, which became the Impreza Outback Sport after a few years (to distinguish it from the Legacy Outback).
The Legacy had debuted in the United States as a 1990 model, overlapping with the venerable Leone (by then known as the Loyale, after many years of being sold as "the Subaru") through 1994. The Legacy wagon's Outback trim package hit our streets for 1995 and sold very well.
The third-generation Legacy would reach North America for the 2000 model year. The Outback version for that year would still be considered a Legacy, but it would have no external Legacy badging and there would be a sedan version through 2004 (after which the Outback sedan would go away and the Outback wagon would become a model in its own right). But before all that happened, Subaru created a lifted, plastic-cladded, outsdoorsy-looking Legacy sedan for the final year of the second generation and named it the Legacy Sport Utility Sedan.
1999 happened to be 30 years after Malcolm Bricklin imported the first Subaru sold in the United States, a silly-looking Kei car that didn't find much success on our roads (unsold inventory ended up at Malibu Grand Prix). That meant that there was a 30th Anniversary Edition package available for the '99 Legacy, and every SUS got it.
Starting with the 1996 model year, every new Subaru sold in the United States came equipped with all-wheel-drive (the final year for Subarus sold here with 1980s-style four-wheel-drive was 1994). I'm still looking for a 1995 or even 1994 Subaru with front-wheel-drive in a Colorado junkyard, so far without success (I've documented a thrown-away 1993 Justy with FWD).
The SUS had the same running gear as the quasi-hot-rod Legacy GT, so this is an EJ25 engine rated at 165 horsepower and 162 pound-feet. I have a 2004 Outback wagon with this engine bolted to a five-speed, and it delivers leisurely acceleration and not-so-impressive fuel economy. My daily-driver Subaru is even slower, but it gets 60 miles per gallon.
1999 was the final year for mechanical odometers in US-market Subarus, so we can see that this car drove a respectable 237,000 miles during its career. The highest-mile Subaru I've ever found in a car graveyard was another Indiana-built 1999 Legacy ( a RHD mail-carrier wagon with a 431,702 final odometer reading).
Colorado has gone to a system of issuing state parks passes via car registration and license plate numbers, so these once-ubiquitous stickers are disappearing.
This hood scoop is nonfunctional, but it looks cool.
There's a big wing on the decklid, too. Perhaps it provides useful downforce at speeds over 150 mph.
Rare, yes. Valuable, no.
In this commercial, a '99 Legacy GT or SUS sedan avoids an exploding electrical transformer while showing the soon-to-be- pervasive influence of a certain hit movie that had just hit theaters.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
1999 Subaru Legacy SUS in Colorado wrecking yard.
[Images: The Author]
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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, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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My mom had one of these. She traded an '89 Olds Cutlass which she had for 10 years and had maybe 17,000 miles on it and got a black SUS which she kept for another 10 years and maybe 8000 miles when she stopped driving. She sold it to a young family for a good price. I rode in it once; I remembered it was very nice inside with a black leather interior. Her husband did all the driving in his various SUVs including a Hummer H2.
And that's my SUS story.
I had a friend Who had an SUS. I thought the leather was the cheapest and chintziest I'd ever seen.