SUBARU may have been a little surprised at how customers flocked to buy the Liberty GT after it was introduced here, in auto-only form, in August 2003. It was, after all, not a cheap Liberty when you consider the base model started at not much more than $30,000. But, like other top-shelf Subarus, it seemed to click. The company expected to do about 50 a month but in the end was delivering more like 140 a month. So impressed was head office that it acceded to local requests for a manual-transmission version – something that was not available anywhere else in the world. The only problem is that the manual is a five-speed, not a six-speed as seen in the quite phenomenal 3.0R-B six-cylinder Liberty. But this is only a slight aberration in a car that is purposely fast, focused and very well built.