The redesigned 2020 Subaru Legacy and Outback each earn safety awards from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
The Outback earns a TOP SAFETY PICK award. The award applies to all Outbacks built after October, as well as earlier models equipped with the base headlights instead of curve-adaptive ones.
The Legacy earns a TOP SAFETY PICK+ award when equipped with curve-adaptive headlights.
To qualify for a 2019 TOP SAFETY PICK award, a vehicle must earn good ratings in the driver-side small overlap front, moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint tests, as well as a good or acceptable rating in the passenger-side small overlap front test. It also needs an advanced or superior rating for front crash prevention and a good or acceptable headlight rating. The TOP SAFETY PICK+ award requires a good passenger-side small overlap rating and a good headlight rating.
Both the Legacy and the Outback earn good ratings in all six of the Institute’s crashworthiness evaluations and come standard with Subaru’s EyeSight crash avoidance system. Each model earns a superior rating for vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention, avoiding collisions in 12 and 25 mph track tests. They have also been evaluated for pedestrian crash prevention, earning a superior rating, though that test isn’t part of the 2019 awards criteria.
The 2020 Legacy earns a TOP SAFETY PICK+ award when equipped with curve-adaptive headlights. Its base headlights earn an acceptable rating. That would be sufficient to qualify for an award without the “plus,” though only one of the awards is given per model.
While the 2019 Outback earned the higher-tier “plus” award, the 2020 model is limited to a TOP SAFETY PICK due to an acceptable headlight rating. That rating applies to its base headlights as well as its available curve-adaptive LEDs on models built after October 2019. The curve-adaptive lights on earlier models rate marginal.
Additionally, the 2020 Subaru Impreza sedan and wagon were not redesigned for 2020 but have updated headlights. The new headlights earn identical ratings to the 2019 models, meaning the vehicles’ 2019 TOP SAFETY PICK+ awards now extend to 2019-20 models equipped with optional front crash prevention and specific headlights.
