45 Fun Facts About Subaru

What does the word 'Subaru' mean in Japanese?

The Pleiades cluster, known in English as the Seven Sisters, gives the badge its stars; company chief Kenji Kita chose the name to mark the merger that created Subaru's parent firm.

How many stars appear on the Subaru logo?

Six: the badge's stars are the group known in English as the Seven Sisters, but tradition holds that one sister is invisible, and only about six stand out to the naked eye.

What was Subaru's parent company called before it renamed itself Subaru Corporation?

Fuji Heavy Industries was born in 1953 when five firms carved out of a broken-up wartime giant merged back together, and it took its famous car brand's name only in 2017.

Subaru's ancestor, founded by Chikuhei Nakajima, was a major wartime supplier of what?

Warplanes: Nakajima was one of Japan's two biggest aircraft makers, so the occupation authorities shut it down in 1945 and it dissolved into spin-off firms that later regrouped.

What was the Fuji Rabbit, which Subaru's forerunner began building in 1946?

A motor scooter: its engineers modelled the Rabbit on the Powell scooters that American troops rode, and it stayed in production until 1968.

Which Australian actor fronted Subaru's American adverts for the Outback in the 1990s?

Paul Hogan, the star of Crocodile Dundee, was hired to play on the wagon's Australian name and pitch it as a smarter alternative to big truck-based SUVs.

How many examples of the first Subaru car, the 1500, were built?

Twenty: a handful of them went to local taxi firms for about a year of hard road testing, and the tiny 360 of 1958 became the first Subaru sold in volume.

The Subaru 360's name came from what?

Its engine displacement in cubic centimetres: the 356 cc two-stroke was sized to slip under the 360 cc cap of Japan's kei-car class, which meant lower taxes for owners.

Which entrepreneur imported the Subaru 360 to the U.S. in 1968 and co-founded Subaru of America?

Malcolm Bricklin picked the 360 because it weighed under 1,000 pounds, which exempted it from American safety rules; he later built a gullwing sports car under his own name.

Which engine layout, first fitted to the Subaru 1000 in 1966, became the brand's signature?

Boxer: its pistons lie flat and punch outward in opposing pairs, cancelling each other's vibration and keeping the engine's weight low in the car.

Which 2012 Subaru model, built with Toyota, is rear-wheel drive rather than all-wheel?

BRZ: Subaru builds the coupe at its own main plant in Japan, on the same line as a near-identical twin that wears a Toyota badge.

During GM's period as a shareholder, a rebadged Impreza was sold in the U.S. under which brand?

Saab, as the 9-2X: fans nicknamed the restyled Impreza wagon the 'Saabaru', and it lasted only two model years before GM sold its stake in Subaru's parent.

Which electric SUV did Subaru launch in 2022 as a twin of Toyota's bZ4X?

Solterra: it rides on an electric-car platform that Subaru and Toyota developed together, one fruit of the shareholding Toyota has held in Subaru's parent since 2005.

Which British motorsport firm, based in Banbury, ran the Subaru World Rally Team?

Prodrive began by running Porsche rally cars; once Subaru handed over its team, the operation moved from Japan to Banbury and the cars became world champions.

Which driver won the 1995 world rally title in a Subaru, becoming the sport's youngest champion at the time?

Colin McRae clinched it by beating his own teammate Carlos Sainz on the final round, Britain's RAC Rally; his record as youngest champion, set at 27, stood until 2022.

Which driver won the 2001 World Rally Championship for Subaru?

Richard Burns came through a four-way title fight to become the first English world champion; he died of a brain tumour four years to the day after clinching it.

Which Norwegian took Subaru's last drivers' title, in 2003?

Petter Solberg beat Sébastien Loeb to the 2003 crown; the Frenchman, runner-up that year, went on to collect nine world titles of his own.

The Subaru rally team's blue-and-yellow livery came from a sponsorship deal with what?

State Express 555 cigarettes put their blue-and-yellow colours on the cars in 1993, and the look stuck: Subaru kept the blue paint and yellow lettering long after the sponsor had gone.

The original Outback wagon of 1994 was derived from which Subaru model?

The Legacy wagon was simply raised and dressed in tough cladding because Subaru could not afford to develop a new SUV; its marketing chief later said the Outback saved the company.

Which Subaru SUV, launched in 1997, shares the Impreza's platform?

Forester: it was even sold in India with Chevrolet badges during the years when General Motors owned a stake in Subaru's parent.

Why did Subaru bolt two rear-facing seats into the cargo bed of its BRAT pickup?

To dodge a US truck tariff: with seats in the bed the BRAT counted as a passenger vehicle, sparing Subaru the 25% duty that America charged on imported pickups.

Which insect gave the tiny Subaru 360 its nickname in Japan?

Ladybug: the rounded little 360 is remembered as Japan's first people's car, cheap enough to put ordinary families on four wheels.

Which Italian designer of 1970s wedge-shaped cars styled Subaru's SVX coupe?

Giorgetto Giugiaro's design appeared as a 1989 Tokyo show car, and Subaru put it into production as a luxury coupe to replace its angular XT.

In which Indiana city is Subaru's main overseas assembly plant?

Lafayette's plant opened in 1989 building Subaru sedans next to a partner firm's pickup trucks, and it later took on contract work assembling a far bigger rival's cars.

With which company did Subaru originally share its Indiana plant?

Isuzu built pickups and SUVs there beside Subaru's sedans until its American sales dwindled; it then pulled out, leaving Subaru as sole owner from 2003.

In which Japanese city are Subaru's car factories located?

Ōta, Gunma, is so bound up with the carmaker that the main plant's address is 1-1 Subaru-chō, a district that carries the brand's name.

Subaru of America left Cherry Hill in 2018 for a new headquarters in which nearby town?

Camden, New Jersey, lured the company a few miles down the road with $118 million in state tax breaks meant to bring employers into the struggling city.

Subaru's long-running American slogan says which word 'is what makes a Subaru, a Subaru'?

Love: the campaign launched in 2008 because, its marketing chief said, 'I love my Subaru' was the phrase he heard most often about the brand.

Which group did 1990s market research find to be unusually loyal Subaru buyers, leading to adverts aimed at them?

Lesbians proved one of Subaru's most devoted groups of buyers, so in a far less tolerant era its ads courted them with taglines that carried double meanings.

American adverts for the tiny Subaru 360 called the car 'Cheap and' what?

Ugly: the self-mocking pitch sold a $1,297 runabout, until Consumer Reports rated the car 'Not Acceptable' in 1969 and sales collapsed.

Which rear-engined model was the last kei vehicle Subaru built itself, bowing out in 2012?

The Sambar had run for more than half a century when Subaru, by then partly owned by Toyota, gave up building its own kei cars and switched to rebadged Daihatsus.

Which three-row SUV, the largest vehicle Subaru makes, went into production in Indiana in 2018?

Ascent: it took over from the Tribeca, dropped four years earlier, and it is a Subaru that Japan never sees, since every one is assembled at the American plant.

The Subaru Telescope, which shares the brand's name, sits on which mountain?

Mauna Kea, Hawaii, pokes above most of the Earth's weather, which is why Japan put its 8.2-metre national telescope on the summit rather than at home.

What does the T stand for in STI, the badge of Subaru's motorsport arm?

Tecnica: Subaru Tecnica International was founded in 1988, and one of its first feats was running three sedans at about 138 mph for 100,000 km to set a world endurance record.

Which country refused Subaru permission for a local joint-venture factory in 2011?

China limited each foreign carmaker to two local joint ventures, and its regulators counted Subaru as part of Toyota, which already had both.

Which Subaru model, sold from 2003, was a car-based pickup?

Baja: Subaru revived the idea behind its old BRAT by grafting an open pickup bed onto the Outback wagon, but the result lasted only four model years.

Which now-defunct brand sold a twin of Subaru's rear-drive sports coupe in North America as the FR-S?

Scion was Toyota's youth brand; when Toyota closed it in 2016, the FR-S simply carried on with a Toyota badge as the 86.

Which Toyota sedan did Subaru's Indiana plant begin building under contract in 2007?

Camry production ran there under contract until 2016, when Subaru took the line back because it needed the space for its own growing output.

For what price did Subaru's parent buy its partner's 49% share of their Indiana plant?

$1: the partner's American SUV sales had collapsed, so it handed over its share for a single dollar and the plant became wholly Subaru's at the start of 2003.

Subaru's Indiana factory was the first US car plant to earn which environmental designation?

Zero-landfill: the plant has sent nothing to a dump since May 2004, and an executive liked to say that throwing away one coffee cup puts more into landfill than the whole factory does.

What kind of sensor did Subaru's EyeSight system use when it launched in 2008?

Dual cameras: like a pair of eyes, the two lenses judge distance from the slight difference between their views, where most rival systems rely on radar.

Which small Subaru pioneered the electronically controlled, steel-belt CVT gearbox in 1987?

Justy: its ECVT swapped fixed gears for a steel belt developed with the Dutch firm Van Doorne, whose limited belt supply at first held production to about 500 gearboxes a month.

Mark Higgins set car records in Subarus at which venue, run on closed public roads?

Isle of Man TT: the races are for motorcycles today, yet road racing on the island began in 1904 with cars, and Higgins's 2011 lap was the first car record there since 1990.

Which racing series saw a Subaru-badged engine never qualify for a race in 1990?

Formula One: Subaru bought into Italy's tiny Coloni team, but its overweight twelve-cylinder engine never got the car through pre-qualifying, and the partnership ended mid-season.

Subaru's headquarters stand in which district of Tokyo's Shibuya ward?

Ebisu takes its name from Yebisu beer, brewed there from 1890: the brand came first, and the district and its railway station were later named after it, not the other way round.