Day 7 of 7 - The Last Night

Time flies when you are best enjoying something that has a time-span. It's the last night with Legacy. Pity its a week-day and I am too tired after work to take the Legacy for a longer drive on this cool-weather night.

That blogger (no pun intended) beat me to it at describing the Legacy's paddle-shifters,so I shan't be draggy at it in my blog entry. I agree with Bot Rocs to a large extent anyway.

Nothing can beat the real deal of pedal-clutch and gear shifter stick when it comes to manual drive. If you are in doubt, go try the WRX-manual and burn some rubber! To master the precision and timing required to reap the full-potential of a manual-drive car, you need practice and more practice.

While you are at it, the adrenaline and sense of achievement wil make it all worthwhile. And for your information, you should shift your gear down before the wide turn to match the speed of the turn, and then accelerate lightly into the turn to ensure maximum lateral tyre grip on the road. Not during the turn.

I did however, notice that the use of Legacy's manual mode sure did not unleash the fuel-regulator into the wild. The rpm does not race towards higher readings for rapid shifting with the paddles. And hence a killjoy. But to be fair, the Legacy's acceleration is already wonderful in its full-automatic drive mode. So that's enjoyable enough in my opinion.

Now, the rest of driver's controls in the Legacy are very good. Oh, except the horn which is hard to depress with your fingers. The turn-signal and windscreen wipers levers are excellent. Just a light push and they go into position, and does it so quietly and softly. The turn knobs for headlights/fog lamps are equally fantastic to operate. And then there is the button for releasing the boot's hatch. It's an electronic switch actually (as opposed to cable-pull type), which require you to press and hold until the boot "pops". Same electronic switches are used for the air-conditioning and audio system controls in the Legacy. Cool enough I'd say unless you yearn for those futuristic touch-screen type controls.

I think the concept Legacy showcased in 2010 has these touch-screen controls but likely to be too costly for incorporating into its production-version.

I will have to return the Legacy tomorrow, but I am still looking forward to the day for another reason. For I am getting my "re-newed" Forester XT from the painters tomorrow! I miss that crazy monster :'S