Subaru (スバル?) is the automobile manufacturing division of Japanese transportation conglomerate Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI), thetwenty-second biggest automaker by production worldwide in 2012.[1]
Subaru is known for its use of the boxer engine layout in most of its vehicles above 1500 cc as well as its use of the all wheel drivedrive-train layout since 1972, with it becoming standard equipment for mid-size and smaller cars in most international markets by 1996, and now standard in most North American market Subaru vehicles. The lone exception is the RWD BRZ introduced in 2012. Subaru also offers turbocharged versions of their passenger cars, such as the Impreza WRX.
Fuji Heavy Industries, the parent company of Subaru, is currently in a partial partnership with Toyota Motor Corporation, which owns 16.5% of FHI.[2]
Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster (M45, or "The Seven Sisters" <one of whom tradition says is invisible--hence only six stars in the Subaru logo>), which in turn inspires the logo and alludes to the companies that merged to create FHI.[3]
Contents
[hide]
1 History
1.1 Major shareholders
1.2 Subaru in the United States
1.3 Subaru in Canada
1.4 Subaru in the Philippines
1.5 Marketing efforts
1.5.1 Hōkago no Pleiades (Original net animation)
1.6 Motorsports
1.7 Diesel
2 New technology
3 Historic cars
4 Environmental record
5 Electric vehicles
6 Current models
7 Concept cars
8 See also
9 References
10 External links
History[edit]

Former logo on a Subaru 360 showing six stars in an arrangement similar to thePleiades open star cluster
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. In 1946, the company created the Fuji Rabbit motor scooter with spare aircraft parts from the war.[4] In 1950, Fuji Sangyo was divided into 12 smaller corporations according to the Japanese Government's 1950 Corporate Credit Rearrangement Act, anti-zaibatsu legislation, but between 1953 and 1955, four of these corporations and a newly formed corporation Fuji Kogyo, a scooter manufacturer; coachbuildersFuji Jidosha; engine manufacturers Omiya Fuji Kogyo; chassis builders Utsunomiya Sharyo and the Tokyo Fuji Dangyo trading company[citation needed] decided to merge to form the Fuji Heavy Industries known today.

Subaru 1500, a.k.a. the P-1
Kenji Kita, CEO of Fuji Heavy Industries at the time, wanted the new company to be involved in car manufacturing and soon began plans for building a car with the development code-name P-1. Mr. Kita canvassed the Company for suggestions about naming the P1, but none of the proposals were appealing enough. In the end, he gave the car a Japanese name that he had "been cherishing in his heart": Subaru, which is the name of the Pleiades star cluster in Japanese. The first Subaru car was named the Subaru 1500.[5] Only twenty P1s were manufactured owing to multiple supply issues. From 1954 to 2008, the company designed and manufactured dozens of vehicles including the 1500 (1954), the tiny air-cooled 360 (1958), the Sambar(1961), the 1000 (which saw the introduction of the Subaru boxer engine in 1965), the R-2 (1969), theRex and the Leone (1971), the BRAT (1978), Alcyone (1985), the Legacy (1989), the Impreza (1993), theForester (1997), the Tribeca (2005), the Exiga (2008), and the BRZ (2012).

1958 Subaru 360
Major shareholders[edit]
Nissan acquired a 20.4% stake in 1968 during a period of government-ordered merging of the Japanese auto industry in order to improve competitiveness under the administration of Prime Minister Eisaku Sato. Nissan would utilize FHI's bus manufacturing capability and expertise for their Nissan Diesel line of buses. In turn, many Subaru vehicles,