I’ve only visited Subaru once, in their seedy head offices in a Tokyo high-rise by the Shinjuku station. An arm of Fuji Heavy Industries, Subaru is an exceptionally individualistic automobile company. The reason for this is that it’s descended from the Aircraft Research Laboratory established by Chikuhei Nakajima in 1917. Starting with his production of Bristol radials under license, Nakajima’s company grew into Japan’s largest producer of aircraft engines in the last years of World War II, employing a quarter-million people. One of its best engines was the 14-cylinder 28-litre Sakae, which powered the famous Zero fighter. The Sakae could be run lean enough for a Zero to be ferried over 1,000 miles.
Relaunching after the war as Fuji Sangyo Ltd., Nakajima looked for a peacetime role. Fuji Heavy was formed in 1953 as the group’s main investment vehicle. After several false starts Fuji introduced its first successful car, its little rear-engined 360, in 1958. In 1966 it moved up a class with the Subaru Star, its first front-drive car with a horizontal opposed four-cylinder ‘boxer’ engine. Charmingly and not without flair, their American ad agency dubbed this the ‘Quadrizontal’ engine. Since then Subaru has remained fiercely loyal to this engine configuration, which it sees as a high-tech concept that links the firm with its great aviation traditions. Many others have used this flat-opposed layout in front-drive cars since the war, among them Citroën, Lloyd, Goliath, Jowett and Alfa Romeo, but none has been so steadfast in its application as Subaru.
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How did Subaru become such a vigorous exponent of four-wheel drive as well? This transpired because a charismatic young Pennsylvanian, Malcolm Bricklin, began importing the little 360s to America. He’d started by bringing in Fuji’s Rabbit scooters and then upgraded to the Subaru 360, which by virtue of its weight of less than 1,000 pounds didn’t have to meet the new American crash-safety rules. The 360’s prospects were blighted by a scathing review from Consumer Reports, but that’s another story.
When visiting Subaru in Japan, Malcolm Bricklin spotted an awkward-looking vehicle in a corner of a company garage. Asked about it, a Subaru executive said, ‘Oh, that’s something that we make for the Japanese forestry service. It has four-wheel drive.’ Seizing on a key point of discrimination, Bricklin persuaded the Fuji men to begin producing such cars for export. He was no longer involved with Subaru of America when they started to arrive, but the peripatetic Bricklin deserves credit as the catalyst for the feature that Subaru now proudly parades as one of its distinctive attributes.
The evolution of Subaru sales in America was noteworthy. Since the 1950s the car of choice for discriminating New Englanders was the Saab. Saabs coped well with winters that in Maine and Vermont were not unlike those in Sweden. Saabs were imported through New York, with a sales organisation that was strong in the Eastern Seaboard. With the arrival of the 4×4 Subarus, however, Saab’s distinctiveness had to give way to a better idea from the Japanese. The Fuji-built autos proved well able to cope with New England’s conditions and had the added benefit of four doors. Backed in this instance by an importer in New Jersey, selling through independently owned distributors, Subarus supplanted Saabs as the preferred import for the north-eastern states.
Meanwhile the other Swede, Volvo, was finding its niche as the car of schoolteachers and intellectuals. Volvos were said to be tough and long-lived, which had its appeal. Subtly, however, an important point was that Volvos were style-free. Although not downright ugly, they were as anodyne in appearance as any car on the market. Their design favoured the estate-car versions, which had unfortunate consequences for some Volvo saloons.
This lack of style had an important implication for both the Volvo and its purchasers. It was obvious, to both friends and onlookers, that the decision to buy a Volvo was not influenced by such an ephemeral consideration as style. Thus it was equally obvious that the Volvo buyer was a person who looked beyond such fleeting aspects of an automobile and chose it for its inherent attributes of performance, economy and durability. This might not have been so, but the Volvo’s self-effacing appearance ensured that that was the impression given, an impression that further reinforced the Volvo’s role as the car for the green and enlightened environmentalist.
Now Peter Horbury has changed all that. The Englishman has given Volvo a new look, still broad-shouldered to be sure but unmistakably stylish. Volvos have flowing fastbacks and trendy lamp units! Reviewers are agog over the latest model shown at Frankfurt (I’d mention its designation if I could penetrate Volvo’s impenetrable thicket of alphanumerics) and its dashboard console, which has them in spasms of ecstasy over its originality and inspiration. It’s even thought to be style-setting for the industry! What has Volvo come to? Style-setting-the very idea! With all this style on hand, whither are Friends of the Earth to turn?
To Subaru, that’s where. Subarus are, and have remained, resolutely dowdy. Consultant after consultant has tried to give the Fuji-built cars a smidgen of style, but they’ve insouciantly shrugged off these efforts. Flaunting improbable mismatches of styles and surfaces, Subarus are self-evidently innocent of any catwalk pretensions. A good example is the new Baja Turbo, which Car and Driver calls ‘not just weird-powerfully weird’ with its cacophonous cocktail of roof racks, side cladding and a pickup-truck bed where a boot should be.
Subaru gives every impression of a company that was disillusioned by its one attempt at high style, its SVX. Introduced in 1991, this exotic sports coupe sold only 24,000 units before its abandonment in 1997. Subaru’s high-performance models, the rally-bred Imprezas, have all the visual appeal of a riding mower. Subaru’s Outback, said a recent review, is ‘always worthy of serious consideration for any professional person who loves in the country and genuinely needs to tackle unmade roads in poor weather-especially if they have to tow a horsebox, caravan or boat.’ Here, surely, is the mission that was once Volvo’s. Anyone buying a Subaru can be confident that onlookers will judge that the choice was made for rational rather than emotional reasons-the old Volvo territory, and not at all a bad reputation for an automobile.
However, I’m concerned that Subaru may be on its way toward marring its reputation as the car of choice for ‘Birkenstock-shod Deadheads,’ as Motor Trend puts it. In Japan it’s been previewing a new Legacy that will be sold in Europe and Japan as a 2004 model and in the USA as an ’05. Available as both estate and saloon, this displays a worrying tendency toward stylish looks. From most angles the new Legacy is quite sleek and in profile could even be taken for the latest Volvo. Reassuringly, however, Autocar says that ‘It’s just a shame that the exterior is so anonymous.’ Perhaps the Legacy won’t damage Subaru’s reputation after all.
If Subaru does succumb to the siren song of style, where are design-immune car buyers to go? I’d have said Toyota’s Prius, but its latest version is annoyingly stylish. In fact the answer is Skoda. Skodas are already off to a fine start in just this segment. ‘Owning a Skoda is the opposite of owning a Merc or BMW,’ says columnist Toby Young. ‘You’re telling the world you’re not insecure about your social status.’ Style guru Peter York echoes this: ‘If you drive a Skoda, you are showing that you are beyond the obvious badges of aspiration. It is a solid, well screwed-together statement of stealthy classlessness and modernity.’ These, of course, are the characteristics that Volvo used to own.
The last word, as usual, should come from Jeremy Clarkson, who says Skoda’s Octavia is a car ‘for the working class, who don’t care what people think. And the upper class, who also don’t care what people think.’ The opportunity is clear: the VW Group should launch Skodas in America as the cars designed from the inside out for the thinking person. No one is better placed than Skoda to seize the style-free-car segment.
Karl Ludvigsen is an award-winning author, historian and consultant who has worked in senior positions for GM, Fiat and Ford. In the 1980s and 1990s he ran the London-based motor-industry management consultancy, Ludvigsen Associates. He is currently an independent consultant and the author of more than three dozen books about cars and the motor industry, including Creating the Customer-Driven Car Company.
