Category: Large Family 
Price Range: £20,400 to £27,400
Unusual, distinctive, tough and durable, utterly useful and practical yet sporting to drive, should be excellent value for money
Too idiosyncratic for some?
A car for those not drawn to the obvious choices, the thinking person's option.
Few second-hand Legacy/Outbacks come onto the market in their early years: owners tend to hang on to their cars for years and years, only trading them in when they've got monster mileages on the clock and are absolutely knackered.
This keeps residual (resale) values very high: a Legacy or Outback really is a very good investment from new should you wish to sell on within the first five years or so.
This means, however, that this is a difficult car to buy second-hand. There are a lot of very low-priced older Legacies around, but take a close look, and they're invariably very high-mileage and have been worked exceedingly hard.
The estates are much-loved by farmers and are virtually used like tractors, while the flashier Outbacks lug horse trailers and motor boats (though rarely anything as common as a caravan) for the green-welly brigade.
Beware sagging suspension, worn-out gearboxes and tired engines. Only Subaru dealers or four-wheel drive specialists have any decent second-hand stock, and it won't come cheap.
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