- Lagging a little bit
Legacy up to speed take one.
It's the all wheel drive sedan,
that launched a rally legend career
and an entire brand ultimate success.
You probably won't find many vapes or huge wengs
in here, but you will find,
Subaru's longest lasting model
and an absolutely sick sleeper car.
Honestly, I think you are going to have
Facebook market place open after this one.
In this episode we'll find out,
how the LGBTQ community,
influenced Subaru's popularity in America.
How this car helped launch Colin McCrae career
and how is Bruce Willis Involved.
This is everything you need to know to get up to
speed on the Subaru Legacy.
For year, our buddies at Subaru watched companies
like Nissan and Toyota and Honda and Ford
sell a ton of cars.
They lagged way behind the competition
and really needed a hit car in their in their line up,
but they really didn't have much of a
Legacy, to build on.
I get it.
Well it does not make sense you might be saying
We all know that Subaru, what they are like today
but what were they like back then.
Well they curved out a nice little pocket
for themselves, by making cheap and reliable cars
with a really impressive optional all wheel drive system,
but they suffered from a big image problem
and it was an image problem that they had created
for themselves, much like a lot of my problems.
So to understand, Let's go back to 1968.
Porter Malcolm Bricklin,
founded Subaru of North America.
He marketed the first Subaru cars as cheap and ugly.
Surprisingly, this self depreciating marketing
works pretty well for him,
that and the fact that the 360 gas
66 miles per gallon and by the early 80s,
Subaru's entire fleet came with optional
all wheel drive which set them apart
from the other budget friendly competition.
But all that marketing about how ugly the cars were,
really stuck with consumers and it made it
hard for them to develop more expensive
i.e more profitable vehicles,
expensive cars usually have bigger margins
and bigger margins means
more money baby.
You know it's like my man puff says,
more money, more problems.
You're killing it puff you're killing it.
Thanks pal,
and since consumers didn't want to pay top dollar
for an ugly and cheap car,
Subaru sales grew stagnant.
So when Subaru launched the fancy new legacy in 89,
they had to convince buyers that it was worth
a premium asking price.
It was Subaru's most spacious vehicle ever
and when compared to the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord,
the legacy had so much more room for activities.
This is how we do it.
His legacy also debuted,
the first of their now legendary flat four EJ series engine,
specifically the 2.2 liter EJ22,
That made 135 Horsepower.
Less than a year later,
they offered a Sports Sedan version
and a Touring Wagon version with the EJ22
turbo baby making 30 more ponies.
Now at this point base model subees were
front wheel drive and all wheel drive
was an extra cost options.
Speaking of options,
the legacy had some top notch ones,
like for real anti lock brakes,
which at the time was big deal.
I mean, Mercedes had just become
the first manufacturer to make ABS standard
only two years before that,
now this cheap Japanese company is doing it.
The top trim legacy also came with adjustable
air suspension.
It automatically lowered the car
while traveling at highway speeds
for better aerodynamics while also
giving the car the option to pull the legacy's
pants up to cross them deep puddles.
So they had a pretty good car
and all Subaru had to do was sell it,
which apparently it was easier said than done.
With the starting price of 12 and a half thousand dollars.
It was $1,000 more than the base Camry
or Nissan Stanza and a couple hundred bucks more
than the Honda Accord.
Now if you wanted a fully decked out legacy,
with power windows,
a sunroof and a turbo charger,
hashtag boost creeps,
you were looking at around 17 grand
and in 17 grand,
you're into well equipped Ford Taurus territory.
I mean, Robocop drove one of those.
It's a freakin Ford Taurus,
it's 1990 in an attempt to propel the legacy
past its competitors.
Subaru launched a three pronged attack.
Step one was to prove that this premium car wasn't
just show it was also go as in G-O
as in scooter to baby,
before the debut the legacy Subaru sent three
out to the test track in Phoenix, Arizona
and drove at an average of 138.8 miles per hour
for almost 19 days
straight.
They covered 100,000 kilometers that's 62,000 miles,
zero problems and set a new endurance speed
record in the process.
Very impressive.
Step two was to stop sucking at rally racing.
Subaru had been competing for about 10 years already,
but in all that time,
their best WRC finish was one third place in one race.
This new car was something different though
hopefully, something better
and in 1992 legacies ran one of the most notoriously
difficult WRC events the Safari Rally.
To give you an idea of how tough this rally was,
Only 10 cars even made it to the finish line.
But two of those 10 were Subaru Legacies
and the one Patrick Njiru drove in the group
and class won.
Even more impressive, was that the group
and was almost stuck.
It was a barely modified car,
is basically the Legacy you could buy.
A pair of Legacy Wagons also placed first and second
in the 1990 Alcan Winter Rally.
A 6000 mile race from Seattle
to a little place where one of my friends
little guy named Santa Claus lives,
talking about the North Pole.
You know, Santa Claus.
Yeah, you can learn all about them
and up to speed episode on Santa's sleigh.
Yeah, I don't think I would have watch that.
Nobody would watch that.
Why would you guys even make that miss out?
It's pretty good.
Maybe if you have kids,
you can show it to them.
Pretty fun.
He's Father Christmas,
and sometimes, being a father is the most
important thing a man can be.
Dad.
With all these new found motor sports success,
Subaru managed to attract a certain
I don't know maybe never heard of
young
Scottish
very cool video games
named after him Collin freakin McRae.
Yeah, you freakin heard of him
lightning, lightning, lightning Collin not only won his
first WRC Rally in the legacy,
he turned Subaru from a zero to a hero in WRC
on his way to becoming one of the most legendary
race car drivers in any sport.
We're going to do a whole entire episode on Colin McRae.
The dude is an absolute legend.
I can't wait to do, I can't wait to do guys.
I'm getting goose pimply about it. But back to legacy.
Step three was for Subaru to somehow
convince consumers that the Legacy
was not only as good as the competition,
it was better.
Now this was particularly tough
because they had just spent 20 years,
two decades,
Joking about how cheap and ugly their cars were.
So first,
they launched some pretty weird software ads
with slogans like, the old grey Subaru
ain't what she used to be.
Then they released some cutthroat ads
aimed directly at their biggest competition.
One commercial was just a bunch of actors
making fun of other car companies slogans,
which came off pretty petty.
People don't like when you're mean to people,
alright people don't like when you're mean
just be nice on purpose.
So how did those speed records,
rally wins and marketing Blitz
Craig's helped the legacy sell,
not very well.
People didn't want to pay a premium,
for an economy Japanese car that got
worse gas mileage due to its heavy
all wheel drive system and overcomplicated
air suspension plus the maintenance
on a flat four boxer engine was pretty time consuming
and expensive and not every mechanic
knew how to do it.
Now desperate, Subaru fired their longtime
ad agency and called In the big guns
the people who came up with just do it,
why didn't Kennedy?
Now they came up with a reverse
snobbery campaign known as what to drive in one ad
a narrator said that if a car improves your standing
with the neighbors then you live
among snobs with distorted values.
The ads went over like a big old,
wet fart in church.
Consumers went from not wanting a legacy
to not even liking the legacy
because it was a jerk,
and that's when Subaru got really desperate.
How desperate you may ask?
Well desperate enough that in 1993
they made a Bruce Willis Special Edition
known as the Touring Bruce.
I'm not making this up is not a joke.
I know I joke a lot in the show.
This is not one of those times.
I'm being serious.
Nature
Family,
friends.
Now technically, those are all Japanese commercials.
So they didn't change the way
the mustard tasted in the US
but still I just needed to tell you guys
about that sort of sales in the gutter
Subaru fired widening Kennedy and hired
a small ad agency called,
MulRyan and Nash which are referred to
as M and N From now on,
because it's easier.
In 1995, they were tasked with selling the rather
blunt second gen legacy and more importantly,
the all new Legacy out there.
Now since they didn't have the dough
to develop a totally new car,
they just slapped a bunch of body cladding
on the Legacy Wagon,
lifted it up a little bit and called it the outback.
It was an uphill battle naturally for M and N
to help turn Subaru's fortunes around,
but they did it by catering to niche markets.
They learned that there were four core groups
who made up over half of Subaru's buyers,
okay, you get your teachers and your educators
you actually healthcare professionals.
Thank you guys so much for what you're doing right now.
Got your IT professionals and then you
got rugged individualists.
Now when M and N was researching the outdoorzy type
they noticed an abnormally high number of
females were listed
as the head of the household on the survey,
they also noticed that a large number of these women
lived in areas that had a higher than average
population of lesbians.
And that is when inspiration struck.
Paul Poe, who led M and N research groups,
pitched the idea of focusing on his words,
gay advertising to the super executives in Japan
to make sure that they understood what Paul was saying,
the executives looked up the meaning of the word gay
and told him they thought it was a great idea
who wouldn't want a happy or joyous advertiser?
So in 1996, Subaru ads were appearing in LGBTQ publications,
the ads were full of little Easter eggs
and subtle nods to the culture.
Subaru finally found its stride
and the new marketing strategy worked,
but you can't just sell Subaru's
to a few niche groups and expect to be profitable.
So for everyone else M and N had a trick up their sleeve
but I'm Paul Hogan Crocodile Dundee himself.
Subaru didn't just throw another shrimp on the barbie
they threw them all on the barbie
Paul was the face of the outback for years.
When I think a Subaru in my childhood,
I think of Crocodile Dundee cause who knows
more about the outback than a guy who lives
in the freakin Outback.
The Legacy Outback trim later became its own model
and ultimately the most successful car
in Subaru's history.
But as the outback took off,
the legacy mostly faded into the background
to try to capture some of the rugged wagons momentum,
Subaru made a sedan version
and called it the legacy SUS or Sport Utility Sedan.
It had all the cladding and lift of an Outback
just without the handy cargo space
and for some reason,
they tried to convince BMW three series owners
this was a better car for them than
the BMW three series
despite having almost zero similar characteristics.
The Sedan sold okay but it was still too expensive
for economy shoppers and to Subaru for premium
shoppers plus EJ25 D engine was notorious
for valve cover leaks and what people
put up with that (bleep) in their outbacks legacy owners.
In 1998, the third Gen legacy dropped
and while it was rumored that Americans
might get the twin turbo engine
Japan got in the previous gen.
We didn't.
Japan had a bunch of really sick models
with stuff like bigger brakes,
stiffer sway bars,
Bilstein struts
and must figure that Americans didn't want
Legacies like that and in the end,
you'll see they are right but in 2004,
we did get an all new legacy
and it was actually really really cool
cause two years into the model run
we got Subaru's all time best sleeper
the legacy 2.5 GT spec B baby.
Subaru Technical International,
basically took all Good stuff from WRX STI
and stuck it in a Legacy boxer forming 250 horsepower,
it came with a six speed manual,
a Torsen Limited Slip diff and advanced
engine mapping system called SI drive
that let the driver choose between three driving modes.
They also had a really sweet hood scoop
because that's what you get when you get faster
and you can hang with Audi S4 all day baby.
But despite all that awesome stuff,
they only sold about 1500 of these over the course
of about four years.
You see, even they give us cool stuff
We don't buy it, We don't deserve anything good.
Despite that, though,
the legacy birth is super popular
Outback and it helped push inclusive
marketing inequality.
It's Subaru's longest running model,
and it's won a ton of rallies.
So I think,
that's a pretty decent legacy.
Right? It's 30 degrees left left.
30 degrees, right Right. 30 degrees (mumbles)