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Subaru is the automobile manufacturing division of Japanese transportation
conglomerate Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI), the twenty-second biggest automaker by
production worldwide in 2012.1
Subaru is known for its use of the boxer
engine layout in most of its vehicles above 1500 cc as well as its use of the
all wheel drive drive-train layout since 1972, with it becoming standard
equipment for mid-size and smaller cars in most international markets as of
1996, and now standard in most North American market Subaru vehicles. The lone
exception is the RWD BRZ introduced in 2012. Subaru also offers turbocharged
versions of their passenger cars, such as the Impreza WRX.
Fuji Heavy
Industries, the parent company of Subaru, is currently in a partial partnership
with Toyota Motor Corporation, which owns 16.5% of FHI.
Subaru Rally Team
Japan led by Noriyuki Koseki (founder of Subaru Tecnica International, STI) ran
Subaru Leone coup¨¦, sedan DL, RX (SRX) and RX Turbo in the World Rally
Championship between 1980 and 1989. Drivers for individual rallies included Ari
Vatanen, Per Eklund, Shekhar Mehta, Mike Kirkland, Possum Bourne and Harald
Demut. Mike Kirkland finished 6th overall and won the A Group at the 1986 Safari
Rally. That year Subaru was one of the only manufacturers combining 4WD and
turbo after Audi's successful quattro system had been introduced in 1980, but
Audi withdrew from the WRC after safety concerns and Ford's serious accident
early in the 1986 season. Subaru changed the rally model to Legacy RS for the
1990¨C1992 period and took part in the first complete season in the World Rally
Championship with the same model in 1993.
Modified versions of the Impreza
WRX and WRX STi have been competing successfully in rallying; drivers Colin
McRae (1995), Richard Burns (2001) and Petter Solberg (2003) have won World
Rally Championship drivers' titles with the Subaru World Rally Team, and Subaru
took the manufacturers' title three years in a row from 1995 to 1997. Subaru's
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 Subaru Legacy.
Subaru was briefly involved in
Formula One circuit racing when it bought a controlling interest in the tiny
Italian Coloni team for the 1990 season. The Coloni 3B's 12-cylinder engine was
badged as a Subaru and shared the boxer layout with the company's own engines,
but was an existing design built by Italian firm Motori Moderni. The cars were
overweight and underpowered and the partnership broke down before the season
finished.16 With the rise of rally racing, and the Import scene in the US, the
introduction of the highly anticipated Subaru Impreza WRX in 2001 was successful
in bringing high-performance, AWD compact cars into the sports car mainstream.
Subaru supplies a factory-backed team, Subaru Rally Team USA for Rally America,
and has won the driver's title six times, most recently in 2011 with David
Higgins.17
On 4 May 2012, Subaru Rally Team USA announced that a new
rallycross team, Subaru Puma Rallycross Team USA, will participate in the 2012
Global RallyCross Championship season with Dave Mirra, Bucky Lasek, and Sverre
Isachsen.18
On 16 December 2008, it was announced that Subaru would no longer
be competing in the World Rally Championships.19 The decision was taken by
Subaru¡¯s parent company, Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI), partly as a result of the
economic downturn but also because it was felt Subaru had achieved its sporting
and marketing objectives. Mr Ikuo Mori denied that alterations to the WRC
technical regulations in 2010 or a rumoured deterioration in the working
relationship with Prodrive had any impact on the decision. He also said that the
possibility of a Subaru car back in the top category of WRC in the future is not
zero, but for this moment there can be no assumption of a comeback.20
Starting in 2006, Subaru of America (SOA), as the official distributor of Subaru
vehicles in the United States, participates in the Subaru Road Racing Team
(SRRT) with a Subaru Legacy 2.5 GT Spec-B in the Grand-Am Street Tuner class. In
2010, SRRT campaigns a Subaru Impreza WRX STI in the Grand Sport class.21 In
2011, SRRT switched from the hatchback to a 2011 Subaru Impreza WRX STI sedan.
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