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Subaru (スバル, Subaru^?) is the automobile manufacturing division of Japanese transportation conglomerate Fuji Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (FHI).

They are known for their use of boxer engines in their vehicles and standard AWD, as well as their turbocharged performance vehicles, such as the Subaru Impreza WRX.

Fuji Heavy Industries, and in turn, Subaru are currently affiliates of Toyota Motor Corporation, which owns 8.7% of FHI.

Subaru has built a reputation for producing high quality, reliable vehicles that did not sacrifice performance for everyday practicality.

The company is named after the star cluster Pleiades, whose Japanese name is "Subaru", that roughly translated into English means, "to govern", "unite," or "gather together". The company logo reflects the star design.

Modified versions of the Impreza WRX and WRX STi have been competing successfully in car rallies; drivers Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Petter Solberg have won World Rally Championship titles with the Subaru World Rally Team. The Subaru World Rally Championship cars are prepared and run by Prodrive, the highly successful British Motorsport team. Several endurance records were set in the early and mid-nineties by the Legacy.

History

FHI started out as "The Aircraft Research Laboratory" in 1917 headed by Chikuhei Nakajima. In 1931, the company was reorganized as "Nakajima Aircraft Company, Ltd", the main airplane manufacturer for Japan in WWII.

At the end of the Second World War, Nakajima Aircraft was again reorganized, this time as Fuji Sangyo Co, Ltd. In 1946, Fuji Sangyo created its first Rabbit motor scooter with spare aircraft parts from the war. In 1950, Fuji Sangyo was divided into 12 smaller corporations according to the 1950 Corporate Credit Rearrangement Act, but between 1953-1955, four of these corporations and a newly formed corporation formed by an alliance of the four aforementioned companies were again merged together to form the Fuji Heavy Industries we know today.

Kenji Kita, the CEO of Fuji Heavy Industries at the time, wanted the new company to be involved in car manufacturing, and chose the name Subaru to grace its first car, the Subaru P1 in 1954. From 1954 to 1989 the company designed and manufactured dozens of vehicles including the P1 (1954), the tiny air-cooled 360 (1958), the Sambar (1961), the 1000(1965), the 1100 and the R2 (1969), the leone (1971, 1975 and 1977), the Domingo (1983), the Alcyone (1985) and the Legacy (1989)

Read more at Wikipedia.org