Subaru Impreza
September 29th, 2008
"Impreza" came from an Italian word, impresa, meaning a feat or achievement. In Polish, "Impreza" means "party", "event" or "show".
The Impreza was introduced after the popular Leone/Loyale was cancelled with the aging EA series engine. The Impreza was introduced with the popular EJ series engine found in the larger Subaru Legacy.
Subaru is the only company that can claim that their drivetrain is symmetrical for this class size of vehicle.
Compared to vehicles in a similar size class such as Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, Nissan Sentra, Mitsubishi Lancer and Mazda 323, only the Impreza has always offered AWD, and as of 1996 Subaru made this feature standard equipment in some markets.
Subaru chose to continue their longstanding use of the boxer engine in the Impreza. According to Subaru, their configuration of the engine inline with the transmission minimizes body roll due to the lower center of gravity compared with the offset engines in most other vehicles. The Subaru layout is also light-weight and lends itself easily to support all-wheel-drive. The boxer design provides perfect vibration mitigation due to the fact that the movement of each piston is exactly countered by the corresponding piston in the opposing cylinder bank, eliminating the need for a counter-rotating weighted crankshaft (harmonic balancer). Torque steer is also reduced with this type of powertrain layout since the front drive shafts are of equal length.
Subaru uses the Impreza chassis for the mechanical underpinnings of the Forester, a small crossover SUV designed to compete in the segment comprising the Honda CR-V and Ford Escape.
As a result of GM's investment in Fuji Heavy Industries and ownership of Saab, the Saab 9-2X had the basis of the Impreza frame, released in 2005 (given the tongue-in-cheek moniker "Saabaru") which was discontinued in 2006 due to the dissolution of the Subaru-GM partnership.
Subaru sold a cosmetically altered (in the neoclassic style) sedan and wagon in Asia called the Subaru Casa Blanca.
The Impreza chassis has been more successful in rallying than Subaru's previous contenders. Prior to the introduction of the Impreza into World Rally Championship racing in 1993, the Subaru World Rally Team had fielded its larger mid-size Legacy. However, with the rest of the rally competition increasingly shifting towards smaller and lighter chassis, Subaru introduced the smaller Impreza, immediately achieving a podium on its debut on the 1994 1000 Lakes Rally. To jumpstart its early rally efforts, and to develop the Impreza into a competitive rally car, Subaru teamed up with its current preporatory firm, British motorsports company Prodrive, in 1989.
Immediately following the first overall WRC event win for both the fledgling Subaru team and its young driver, the late Colin McRae aboard a Group A Legacy on the 1993 Rally New Zealand, the Scotman's team-mate and childhood idol, 1981 World Rally Champion, Ari Vatanen of Finland, went on to finish second in the debut rally of the first ever factory Impreza. New recruit for the following season, 1990 and 1992 World Champion, Carlos Sainz brought the Impreza its inaugural victory on the 1994 Acropolis Rally.
The Impreza brought Subaru three consecutive WRC constructors' titles (1995–1997, the latter season the first for the newly introduced World Rally Car class) and a driver's championship for McRae in 1995, the late Richard Burns in 2001, and the Norwegian, Petter Solberg in 2003.
Another evolution of the Impreza WRC made its debut in the 2007 Corona Rally Mexico. Unfortunately, the team had several major problems with reliability as the car experienced mechanical difficulties in almost every rally from its first.
Subaru debuted an Impreza WRC in hatchback form for the first time from the 2008 Acropolis Rally onwards, on which event Solberg scored a second place finish.
In Australia, the 1993-2004 Subaru Impreza was assessed in the Used Car Safety Ratings 2006 as providing "average" protection for its occupants in the event of a crash. In frontal-offset and side crash tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the United States, the second-generation Impreza earned "Good" ratings. 2005-2007 models also earned a "Good" rating for rear crash protection (head restraint design) placing it at the top of IIHS small car ratings.
The third generation MY2008 Impreza continued the tradition and also earned the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety highest rating for "Good" in each individual test, earning an overall score of "Good".
The third generation MY2008 Impreza hatchback received five stars (34.66 out of 37 points) for occupant protection and a four star pedestrian rating under testing by ANCAP.
Subaru
July 12th, 2008
Subaru is known for their use of boxer engines in most of their vehicles. The company decided to utilize all wheel drive in most international markets as standard equipment in 1996.
Fuji Heavy Industries, the parent company of Subaru, is currently in a partnership with Toyota Motor Corporation, which owns 16.5% of FHI.
The company is named after the star cluster Pleiades; in Japanese the name is "Subaru", which roughly translated into English means, "to govern", "unite," or "gather together". The company logo is influenced by the star cluster. The large star in the logo represents Fuji Heavy Industries, and the five smaller stars represent the current five companies that are united under the FHI group. In Japan, the company also goes by the name Mutsuraboshi ("Six Stars"), under which title it appears frequently in very old Japanese documents such as Kojiki and Man'yōshū and literature such as Makura no Sōshi.
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 the Fuji Rabbit motor scooter with spare aircraft parts from the war. In 1950, Fuji Sangyo was divided into 12 smaller corporations according to the Japanese Government's 1950 Corporate Credit Rearrangement Act (anti-zaibatsu legislation), but between 1953-1955, four of these corporations and a newly formed corporation, known as Fuji Kogyo (a scooter manufacturer}, Fuji Jidosha (a coachbuilder specializing in bus manufacture), Omiya Fuji Kogyo (an engine manufacurer), Utsunomiya Sharyo (a chassis manufacturer) and Tokyo Fuji Dangyo (a trading company), decided to merge 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. Mr. Kita canvassed the Company for suggestions about naming the P-1, but none of the proposals was appealing. In the end, Mr. Kita gave the car a Japanese name that had been his personal favorite from childhood --- Subaru. Only 20 P1's were manufactured due to multiple supply issues. From 1954 to 2008, 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 R2 (1969), the Leone (1971), the Domingo (1983), the Alcyone (1985), the Legacy (1989), the Impreza (1993), the Sambar EV electric van (1995), the Forester (1997), the Tribeca (2005), and the Subaru Exiga in 2008.
On October 5, 2005 Toyota Motor Corporation purchased 8.7% of FHI shares from General Motors who had owned 20.1% of FHI since 1999. GM later divested its remaining 11.4% stake, selling its shares on the open market to sever all ties with FHI. FHI previously stated that there might have been 27 million shares (3.4%) acquired before the start of trading by an unknown party on October 6, 2005, and speculation suggested that a bank or perhaps another automaker was involved. After the purchase, Toyota announced a contract with Subaru on March 13, 2006 to use the underutilized Subaru manufacturing facility in Lafayette, Indiana, and Toyota announced plans to hire up to 1,000 workers and set aside an assembly line for the Camry model, beginning in spring 2007.
Before GM's ownership, Nissan had acquired the 20% stake in 1968 during a period of government-ordered merging of Japanese auto industry to merge in order for improved competitiveness under the administration of Prime Minister Eisaku Sato. Nissan would utilize FHI's bus manufacturing capability and expertise for their Nissan Diesel line of buses. In turn, many Subaru vehicles, even today, use parts from the Nissan manufacturing keiretsu. The Subaru automatic transmission, known as the 4EAT, is also used in the first generation Nissan Pathfinder. Speculation has suggested that it was Subaru that introduced Renault to Nissan, when Nissan asked for assistance in all-wheel drive (AWD) technology, and when FHI might have suggested that Renault discuss their plans with Nissan, the discussions may have been a contributing factor to the currently successful Renault-Nissan alliance. Upon Nissan's acquisition by Renault, its 20% stake was sold to General Motors.
During the General Motors period, a modified Impreza was sold in the United States as the Saab 9-2X. A SUV (Subaru Tribeca / SAAB 9-6X) was also plannedbut the SAAB version did not proceed.
Subaru claims to have implemented advanced policies which include recycling, reducing harmful emissions, educating their employees, and continuing their efforts have helped them in their environmental initiatives. The Subaru plant in Lafayette, Indiana (SIA) was the first auto assembly plant to achieve zero landfill status - nothing from its manufacturing efforts goes into a landfill. The company has also developed energy efficient hybrid vehicles as well as a recycling plan for their "end-of-life" cars.
An excerpt from the Subaru website stated "In 2006, SIA was awarded the U.S. EPA's Gold Achievement Award as a top achiever in the agency's WasteWise program to reduce waste and improve recycling." The website also went on to claim, "It also became the first U.S. automotive assembly plant to be designated a wildlife habitat."
Subaru also offers Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle (PZEV) certified Legacy, Outback, and Forester models which are available for sale anywhere in the U.S. Subaru PZEV vehicles meet California's Super-Ultra-Low-Emission Vehicle exhaust emission standard. All other models have been certified LEV2.
On April 10, 2008, Toyota approximately doubled its stake in FHI to 16.5%, and announced that Toyota and Subaru are working on a 2-door coupe together, to be released around 2011. The purchase was made legal on June 27, 2008.
According to an article posted by Autoblog on May 28, 2008, the coupe that Toyota and Subaru are working on together will be sold in Japan only as a Toyota, and internationally as a Subaru. The Subaru version is initially being branded as an Impreza coupe, with the powertrain being described as RWD with the 2.0 liter boxer engine, and optional 2.5 turbo from the WRX STi and AWD. Spy photos of a prototype testing mule were taken in the UK, heavily disguised using Legacy bodywork on a shortened frame. It has been suggested that the Toyota version could be a revival of the Toyota Levin/Trueno.
