Some cars you buy for yourself. This one I went looking for on somebody else's behalf, which turns out to be a different and more careful kind of hunting.
Humayun wanted a Legacy Twin Turbo in manual, and he wanted a tidy one, which narrows the field considerably. The Legacy is Subaru's fast estate: sensible shape, four wheel drive, and two turbochargers handing off to each other so the shove arrives early and then keeps arriving. It is a car that looks like it does the school run and does not behave like it.
The one we found was genuinely clean, which for a car of that age and that specification is mostly luck. It also wore an aftermarket exhaust, certified and legal, and loud in a way you heard before you saw it. Start it in a car park and heads turned.
He was already deep into cars by then. He has owned a long line of Legacies and Porsches since, so this was never going to be the last of them.
It was a good first entry in a long list, and it announced itself properly.
