Learn More On the Beginning of the Subaru Brand of Vehicles

The vaguely named "Aircraft Research Laboratory" founded in 1917 by Chikuhei Nakijima is interestingly enough the obscure roots from which Subaru and its parent company Fuji Heavy Industries came. Prior to this, while still a student at the Japanese naval academy, and at age 19, Nakijima was fascinated by the idea of people flying, and got caught up in the romance evoked by taking to the skies upon learning of the Wright brothers' first successful powered flight. This led to Nakijima working on production of aircraft for the Japanese navy. As Nakijima became less satisfied with merely building aircraft and became more interested in developing them, he left the Naval Academy and founded the Aircraft Research Laboratory.

The new company would soon be renamed Nakijima Aircraft Co. Ltd., and quickly became one of Japan's leading aircraft design and manufacturing entities in the years leading up to World War II and even during the war. The domestic aircraft industry bankrupted after Japan lost World War II in 1945, and Nakijima Aircraft was renamed Fuji Sangyo Co. On top of this they began using designs taken from aircraft, motor scooters, and bus body building production.

In June 1946, in response to the demand for inexpensive personal transportation, Fuji Sangyo, having spent six months studying a Powell Streamliner scooter (as used by American service personnel of the time), developed his own execution of this existing design. Named the Fuji Rabbit, it was instantly successful with the locals who liked its step-through design, low center of gravity and adequate functioning. It was propelled by a 1.5kW 135cc air-cooled engine and used war surplus tail-wheels from military planes! The Rabbit was in the market a full six months prior to the first production line of Vespa scooters.

Fuji Sangyo was forced to split into twelve smaller companies after a 1950 law was passed. Formed from the break-up of Fuji Sangyo in 1953, Fuji Heavy Industries was brought together as an aircraft manufacturing, maintenance and sales company. In just two short years the five investors merged with FHI, which began the modern FHI as it is seen today.

The P-1, the very first passenger car prototype for FHI, was produced in 1954. By carrying out an inter-company poll, Kenji Kita, the then president of FHI, attempted to find a name for the fledgling car division of the company which he headed.

Kita chose the name not only because of poor suggestions, but because of the special meaning it has to the Japanese people and his personal connection to the name. Subaru, for both the Chinese and Japanese, is the cluster of six visible stars in the west known as the Pleiades.

Translated, Subaru means "to gather together or to govern", and sometimes "unity". FHI was a fusion of 6 different companies, which shows just how intriguing the name Subaru really is.

Even with the failure of the P-1, based on the Subaru 1500, FHI was able to hit on a successful mini-car line for the masses with the Subaru 360 in 1958. Successful for 11 years, the 360 was a little four-seat car.

As for everything else, well, it's history.

Brett Middleton wrote the Subaru Performance Handbook based on his 10 plus years of experience working on Subaru vehicles. MRT Performance, his company, has serviced, worked on and modified more of Australia's Subarus than any other shop.

You'll find no better or more comprehensive book on Subarus than his! Subaru is popular in almost all countries.

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