1986 Subaru Legacy starts after being submerged in lake for three months

After Top Gear’s numerous tests of the Toyota Hilux and how they could never really and truly kill the car, people finally realized just how well built modern day cars are, specifically Japanese ones despite their generally low prices.

But the car in the following story has to take the crown for the toughest car on the planet. A 1986 Subaru Legacy was recently pulled out of a Finnish lake after sitting at the bottom of this bitterly-cold body of water for three months and, wait for it, managed to start first try.

You can smash a car into as many trees as you want in order to destroy it, but there’s no bigger test than submerging a car for an extended period of time in order to truly test out a car’s build quality.

This particular Subaru was sitting under 12 feet of water and as a result, would have constantly been under significant pressure yet all of the windows remained in tack. Of course, that’s nothing when compared to the car actually starting.

In order to get it started, the Finnish owner extracted the lake water from the gas tank and oil reservoirs, and then doused the ECU with some brake parts cleaner. Before he knew it, the car started right up as did the vast majority of the car’s electronic systems.

It’s safe to say that this Subaru may have created its own Legacy.