Subaru Trivia
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45 free Subaru trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades, which is why there are six stars on the badge and why the company's first luxury coupe was called Alcyone. The brand grew out of the Nakajima Aircraft Company, sold its first American cars as 'Cheap and Ugly,' put a boxer engine in the 1000 in 1965 and Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive in the Leone in 1972, and then spent the 1990s winning World Rally Championships in blue and gold. This quiz covers the whole story: Fuji Heavy Industries and CEO Kenji Kita's naming of the P-1, the Subaru 360 and Malcolm Bricklin, the Nissan, GM and Toyota partnerships, the Impreza and WRX, Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Petter Solberg, the Outback, Forester, BRAT, SVX and BRZ, the Lafayette, Indiana plant, the Solterra and the ad slogans. Some questions are easy for any owner; others will test the people who can name every EJ engine variant. Every answer is checked against a reference source and each question links to where the fact was confirmed.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the word 'Subaru' mean in Japanese?
The Pleiades cluster
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.
Q 02How many stars appear on the Subaru logo?
Six
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.
Q 03What was Subaru's parent company called before it renamed itself Subaru Corporation?
Fuji Heavy Industries
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.
Q 04Subaru's ancestor, founded by Chikuhei Nakajima, was a major wartime supplier of what?
Warplanes
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.
Q 05What was the Fuji Rabbit, which Subaru's forerunner began building in 1946?
A motor scooter
A motor scooter: its engineers modelled the Rabbit on the Powell scooters that American troops rode, and it stayed in production until 1968.
Q 06Which Australian actor fronted Subaru's American adverts for the Outback in the 1990s?
Paul Hogan
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.
Q 07How many examples of the first Subaru car, the 1500, were built?
Twenty
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.
Q 08The Subaru 360's name came from what?
Its engine displacement in cubic centimetres
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.
Q 09Which entrepreneur imported the Subaru 360 to the U.S. in 1968 and co-founded Subaru of America?
Malcolm Bricklin
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.
Q 10Which engine layout, first fitted to the Subaru 1000 in 1966, became the brand's signature?
Boxer
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.
Q 11Which 2012 Subaru model, built with Toyota, is rear-wheel drive rather than all-wheel?
BRZ
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.
Q 12During GM's period as a shareholder, a rebadged Impreza was sold in the U.S. under which brand?
Saab, as the 9-2X
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.
Q 13Which electric SUV did Subaru launch in 2022 as a twin of Toyota's bZ4X?
Solterra
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.
Q 21Why did Subaru bolt two rear-facing seats into the cargo bed of its BRAT pickup?
To dodge a US truck tariff
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.
Q 22Which insect gave the tiny Subaru 360 its nickname in Japan?
Ladybug
Ladybug: the rounded little 360 is remembered as Japan's first people's car, cheap enough to put ordinary families on four wheels.
Q 23Which Italian designer of 1970s wedge-shaped cars styled Subaru's SVX coupe?
Giorgetto Giugiaro
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.
Q 14Which British motorsport firm, based in Banbury, ran the Subaru World Rally Team?
Prodrive
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.
Q 15Which driver won the 1995 world rally title in a Subaru, becoming the sport's youngest champion at the time?
Colin McRae
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.
Q 16Which driver won the 2001 World Rally Championship for Subaru?
Richard Burns
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.
Q 17Which Norwegian took Subaru's last drivers' title, in 2003?
Petter Solberg
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.
Q 18The Subaru rally team's blue-and-yellow livery came from a sponsorship deal with what?
State Express 555 cigarettes
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.
Q 19The original Outback wagon of 1994 was derived from which Subaru model?
The Legacy
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.
Q 20Which Subaru SUV, launched in 1997, shares the Impreza's platform?
Forester
Forester: it was even sold in India with Chevrolet badges during the years when General Motors owned a stake in Subaru's parent.
Q 24In which Indiana city is Subaru's main overseas assembly plant?
Lafayette
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.
Q 25With which company did Subaru originally share its Indiana plant?
Isuzu
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.
Q 26In which Japanese city are Subaru's car factories located?
Ōta, Gunma
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.
Q 27Subaru of America left Cherry Hill in 2018 for a new headquarters in which nearby town?
Camden, New Jersey
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.
Q 28Subaru's long-running American slogan says which word 'is what makes a Subaru, a Subaru'?
Love
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.
Q 29Which group did 1990s market research find to be unusually loyal Subaru buyers, leading to adverts aimed at them?
Lesbians
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.
Q 30American adverts for the tiny Subaru 360 called the car 'Cheap and' what?
Ugly
Ugly: the self-mocking pitch sold a $1,297 runabout, until Consumer Reports rated the car 'Not Acceptable' in 1969 and sales collapsed.