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Fail of the century #28: Subaru Levorg | Top Gear

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When the Subaru Levorg was proudly unveiled at the 2015 Geneva show, Top Gear gently pointed out that, read backwards, its name spelled out ‘GROVEL, U R A BUS’. This made the man from Subaru very upset, and our relationship with the sorry ’Vorg struggled to recover thereafter.

This was not solely Top Gear’s fault. See, the Levorg was billed as the spiritual successor to Subaru’s brilliant Legacy Spec B, an understated performance estate of the Noughties that boasted genuine pace, and genuine rally infused handling.

And if there’s one thing that makes Top Gear upset, it’s being promised an understated performance estate, and being served a confused, lethargic mess.

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Because the Levorg was, in cricketing parlance, a proper medium-pace trundler. At launch, its sole powerplant, a 1.6-litre turbo petrol, pumped out a weedy 168bhp. Zero to 60 required around nine seconds. In later years, Subaru decided even 168bhp was dangerously excessive, and replaced the turbo engine with an even less potent nat-asp unit.

Worst of all, that meagre power was piped to the wheels through a CVT, a gearbox arrangement that screams ‘performance’ in much the same way that Greggs screams ‘haute cuisine’. The Levorg didn’t bring much ‘grovel’, but it sure brought plenty of ‘bus’.

# data.attributes.body.processed
When the Subaru Levorg was proudly unveiled at the 2015 Geneva show, Top Gear gently pointed out that, read backwards, its name spelled out ‘GROVEL, U R A BUS’. This made the man from Subaru very upset, and our relationship with the sorry ’Vorg struggled to recover thereafter.

This was not solely Top Gear’s fault. See, the Levorg was billed as the spiritual successor to Subaru’s brilliant Legacy Spec B, an understated performance estate of the Noughties that boasted genuine pace, and genuine rally infused handling.

And if there’s one thing that makes Top Gear upset, it’s being promised an understated performance estate, and being served a confused, lethargic mess.

Because the Levorg was, in cricketing parlance, a proper medium-pace trundler. At launch, its sole powerplant, a 1.6-litre turbo petrol, pumped out a weedy 168bhp. Zero to 60 required around nine seconds. In later years, Subaru decided even 168bhp was dangerously excessive, and replaced the turbo engine with an even less potent nat-asp unit.

Worst of all, that meagre power was piped to the wheels through a CVT, a gearbox arrangement that screams ‘performance’ in much the same way that Greggs screams ‘haute cuisine’. The Levorg didn’t bring much ‘grovel’, but it sure brought plenty of ‘bus’.