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FWIW and IMHO Subarus are not the most FE friendly vehicles. For a start there is the extra weight and drag of the AWD system and secondly I don't think the flat four is a really great engine for FE.
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You're right about the AWD system adding drag, but there is nothing inherently inefficient or unreliable about the flat-four engine. The current Legacy gets mileage on par with comparable FWD cars, and reliability issues with Subaru engines in the past have been generally unrelated to the flat-four design itself. The 2.2 in the 96 Legacy is not quite as efficient as newer engines, but it's a bulletproof engine that will easily outlast the rest of the car.