Subaru vehicle research

Subaru is the automobile manufacturing division of Japanese transportation conglomerate Subaru Corporation (formerly known as Fuji Heavy Industries), the twenty-first largest automaker by production worldwide in 2017. Subaru cars are known for their use of a boxer engine layout in most internal combustion vehicles above 1,500 cc. The Symmetrical All Wheel Drive drive-train layout was introduced in 1972.

History

Fuji Heavy Industries started out as the Aircraft Research Laboratory in 1915, headed by Chikuhei Nakajima. In 1932, the company was reorganized as Nakajima Aircraft Company, Ltd and soon became a major manufacturer of aircraft for Japan during World War II. At the end of the Second World War, Nakajima Aircraft was again reorganized, this time as Fuji Sangyo Co, Ltd.

Lineup

Subaru's lineup is defined by two pieces of engineering shared across nearly every model: a boxer (horizontally opposed) engine layout, used in every internal-combustion Subaru above 1,500cc, and Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive, introduced in 1972 and standard on virtually every mid-size and smaller Subaru by 1996. The only current exceptions are the BRZ, a rear-wheel-drive sports car built with Toyota since 2012 that keeps the boxer engine but drops all-wheel drive for sharper handling, and the Uncharted, a front-wheel-drive-based crossover introduced with Toyota in 2026 that offers AWD only as an option rather than standard equipment. Beyond that shared drivetrain architecture, the lineup differs mainly by size and trim: the Impreza and Crosstrek are compact, the Outback and Forester are Subaru's core mid-size wagon/SUV models, and the three-row Ascent is the brand's largest SUV, while WRX and STI badges mark turbocharged, performance-tuned versions layered on top of the regular sedans and wagons. Subaru is named for the Pleiades star cluster (すばる in Japanese), and its six-star logo, missing the seventh star tradition says is invisible, alludes to the companies that merged to form parent Fuji Heavy Industries (now Subaru Corporation), which began in 1915 as an aircraft manufacturer before entering the car business.

Marketing

Some of the advertising slogans Subaru has used in the past include: "Inexpensive, and built to stay that way", "The World's Favourite Four Wheel Drive" (in the UK), "We built our reputation by building a better car", "What to Drive", "The Beauty of All-Wheel Drive", "Driven by What's Inside", "Think, Feel, Drive", "Confidence in Motion" (USA early 2010s) and currently "Love.

Electric vehicles

In June 2006, Fuji Heavy Industries, Inc. (FHI) launched its Subaru Stella Plug-in electric vehicle which is a kei car equipped with a lithium-ion battery pack. The vehicle has a short range of 56 miles (90 km) but it actually costs more than the Mitsubishi iMiEV, at ¥4,380,000 (US$44,860), including Japanese Government consumption taxes with an exemption of $2,240.

Environmental record

Subaru claims to have implemented advanced policies which include recycling, reducing harmful emissions, and educating its employees. Its efforts have helped it in its environmental initiatives. The Subaru plant in Lafayette, Indiana (SIA) was the first auto assembly plant to achieve zero-landfill status; nothing from the manufacturing process goes into a landfill.

Source: Subaru (Wikipedia)