Junkyard Find: 1991 Subaru Legacy 4WD RHD Rural Delivery Wagon
About a year ago, I found a U.S.-market 1999 Subaru Legacy wagon with right-hand-drive and 431,702 miles on its odometer in a Denver car graveyard. I thought it would be quite a while before I found another, but then I found this '91 in a junkyard in Carson City, Nevada.
You'll find some interesting vehicles in the junkyards of the high desert around Reno and Lake Tahoe. Just at this single walk-through at the Carson City PnP, I photographed one of the first 1,000 Honda CRXs ever built, a 1948 Cadillac Series 62 and a 1965 Mercury Park Lane convertible (which I haven't yet written about), in addition to today's Subaru.
The final odometer reading is impressive. This is the fifth-best-traveled junkyard Subaru I've documented, after a 1998 Legacy Outback wagon with 528k miles, the aforementioned RHD 1999 Legacy wagon with 431k miles, a 1995 Legacy wagon with 366k miles and a Legacy Outback wagon with 341k miles. However, 336,492 miles is good for 67th place overall in the Murilee Martin Junkyard Odometer Standings.
The fact that all of these high-mileage Subarus are first- and second-generation Legacy wagons suggests that these are well-built cars that inspired sufficient owner love to keep them maintained (maybe the third-generation and later Legacies have done just as well, but they have hard-to-read-in-junkyards digital odometers). For what it's worth, of the nine discarded Subarus I've documented with better than 300,000 miles on the clock, only two were non-Legacies ( one Impreza wagon, one Leone wagon).
One interesting thing about this car is that it was sold new for use as a rural mail delivery vehicle and the mileage seems to indicate that it performed that job for many years, yet it has a regular passenger seat and none of the usual sorting trays, interior damage or general USPS detritus that I've seen in other such vehicles.
Instead, it looks like a well-cared-for daily driver that just wore out. Maybe it never carried mail, or perhaps it underwent the usual postal abuse and then had its interior repaired and cleaned.
A more typical rural delivery machine in the junkyard is something like this: all the non-driver seats torn out and a homemade sorting table crudely wood-screwed into place.
Idling along dirt roads with the driver's window open for year after year, with stops to shovel in more bundles of mail, tends to be hard on a car.
For many years, the most popular vehicles for the private contractors doing rural mail delivery were ex-USPS AM General DJ-5 Dispatchers. When those finally wore out, RHD conversions of varying grades of sketchiness became popular; in addition to the 1999 Olds 88 in this photo, I've run across the same sort of rig in a junked 1998 Subaru Forester.
Another affordable option is the Japanese-market XJ Jeep Cherokee. These right-hand-drive trucks were built in the United States, sold new in Japan (where they were quite popular) and then shipped back across the Pacific. RHD Cherokees were sold in the UK as well, but I've never heard of one of those being used for mail delivery in North America.
RHD XJs were also sold new in the United States, and I've found a few of those in the boneyards. In fact, Stellantis is still in the RHD Jeep business in the United States right now; you can still buy a new RHD Wrangler today.
That's because truck shoppers in Japan still love their new Jeeps.
Since Subaru was already in the business of building the Legacy in both RHD and LHD forms, it made sense to offer an Americanized RHD version for sale to rural mail carriers in North America. GM also sold a right-drive version of the Saturn S-Series here for a few years.
Today's Junkyard Find was built at Subaru's plant in Gunma Prefecture. Later on, production of the Rural Mail Delivery Wagon moved to Indiana.
This isn't a JDM car with a speedometer swap. It was built specifically for the U.S. market, and it was certified for both California and 49-state emissions legality.
The Legacy was introduced as a 1990 model in North America, and it was much bigger and more modern than the aging Leone-based cars that had been sold here since 1972. The Leone soldiered on (badged as the Loyale in the USA) after the Legacy hit dealerships, finally getting the axe after 1994.
The Outback package for the Legacy and Impreza reached our shores for the 1995 model year, with the Legacy wagon becoming by far the most popular Outback version as the decade went on. Starting in 2000, Legacy badging was removed from the Outback's exterior; once the Legacy Outback sedan ceased production after 2004, the Outback name went only on Legacy-based wagons.
The engine is a 2.2-liter SOHC H4, rated at 130 horsepower and 137 lb-ft. The H6 engine wasn't available in the U.S.-market Legacy until the 2000 model year. The transmission is the mandatory Rural Delivery automatic.
You'll find one in every car. You'll see.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
1991 Subaru Legacy RHD in Nevada junkyard.
[Images: author]
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