Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster, which in turn inspires the Subaru logo and alludes to the six companies that merged to create Fuji Heavy Industries or for short FHI.

Fuji Heavy Industries established July 7, 1953 and the first Subaru car introduced 1954. Headquarters, Ota, Gunma, Japan. Industry, Automobile manufacturing.

Fuji Heavy Industries or for short FHI, the parent company of Subaru, is currently in a partial partnership with Toyota Motor Corporation.

Subaru is the automobile manufacturing division and brand name of Japanese transportation conglomerate Fuji Heavy Industries.

Subaru is internationally known for their use of boxer engines in most of their vehicles above 1500cc as well as their proponence of the all wheel drive drivetrain layout, first introduced in 1972, and became standard equipment for mid size and smaller cars in most international markets as of 1996. They also offer many turbocharged versions of their passenger cars, such as the Impreza WRX.

Fuji Heavy Industries started out as The Aircraft Research Laboratory in 1917 headed by Chikuhei Nakajima.

The first Subaru car was named the Subaru 1500 (Photo shown).


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), the Rex and the Leone (1971), the BRAT (1978), Alcyone (1985), the Legacy (1989), the Impreza (1993), the Forester (1997), the Tribeca (2005), and the Exiga (2008).

Since the 2005 model year, Subaru has adopted the Controller–area network (CAN) bus technology for the USA and Canada markets. Starting in the 2007 model year, all Subaru vehicles use the CAN technology. Typically, two CAN-buses are used on vehicles: a high-speed CAN running at 500 Kbps for powertrain communication, and a low-speed CAN running at 125 Kbps for body control functions and instrument panels. A body-integrated unit (BIU) is used between these two networks.