Why the Subaru badge shows six stars of the Seven Sisters
Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades, the cluster also called the Seven Sisters. Tradition holds that one sister cannot be seen, which is why the badge carries six stars. The name was a private favourite of the executive who launched the carmaker, and it hints at the merger that created its parent.
Kenji Kita, then running Fuji Heavy Industries, wanted cars in the lineup and started a project coded P-1. Staff suggestions for a name left him cold, so he chose one he had long treasured. The resulting Subaru 1500 of 1954 never really reached buyers: supply trouble held output to twenty. Later efforts went better, including the tiny air-cooled 360 of 1958, the Sambar of 1961 and the 1000, which in 1965 brought the first Subaru boxer engine.
That flat engine layout, paired from 1972 with a symmetrical all-wheel-drive system, became the brand's signature. By 1996 both were standard on its mid-size and smaller cars in most markets. The BRZ, codeveloped with Toyota and on sale from January 2012, broke the pattern by sending power to the rear wheels only.
Ownership changed hands repeatedly. Nissan took 20.7% of the parent in 1968 under a government push to consolidate Japan's car industry, and some Subaru models still use parts from Nissan's supplier network. General Motors took over that stake in 1999, a period that produced oddities like the Saab 9-2X, a rebadged Impreza. After GM sold out in 2005, Toyota became the partner, lifting its holding to 16.5% in 2008; Subaru stopped designing its own kei cars, and the last in-house Sambar ended a 54-year run in March 2012.
Unusually for a Japanese maker, almost 75% of the Subarus sold abroad in early 2016 were built at home, in plants around Ōta in Gunma Prefecture, one of them a former Nakajima Aircraft site. The main overseas factory sits in Lafayette, Indiana. In the 1990s an agency working for Subaru of America found that the all-wheel-drive models were popular among lesbians, and the company began marketing to them in subtle ways.
Source: Subaru
