On October 21st, 1965, Subaru revealed the Subaru 1000 at the Hilton Hotel Tokyo. Eight days later, the 1000 was shown at the 12th Annual Tokyo Motor Show held in Harumi, Tokyo. This was Subaru’s first entry into the blossoming compact car class. This was also a significant milestone for a company only known for its kei cars. The Subaru 1000 was technologically advanced for its time, and introduced many design elements that helped define Subaru as a company. This new model also set the stage as one of their first models truly suitable for global export.




Just seven years prior, Fuji Heavy Industries introduced their first vehicle under the Subaru brand. This vehicle was the Subaru 360, an entry in the kei car class designed to get the people of Japan into four-wheeled vehicles and promote the growth of the Japanese automotive industry. Now, in the early 1960s, the Japanese public was buying cars like never before. They were demanding larger, more comfortable cars with more features than was typical of the kei car class at the time. The Subaru 360 was not going to cut it. Several automobile manufacturers designed products to enter this emerging compact car class, including Toyota and Nissan. Subaru decided to enter this promising market, too, in a way that only Subaru could have imagined.




Subaru actually began work on a compact car back in 1954, four years before the introduction of the Subaru 360. This vehicle was known as the Subaru 1500, but was known internally by its development code as the P-1. Shinroku Momose, who had been with Fuji Heavy Industries and its predecessors since 1942, was assigned to the project as the lead designer. The 1500 used a monocoque body construction with independent front wishbone suspension and rear leaf spring suspension with a live rear axle. The 1500 used a front engine, rear wheel drive setup; this was the only FR vehicle produced by Subaru until the introduction of the BRZ in 2013. The water-cooled 1.5 liter four cylinder engine was sourced from the Peugeot 202, and built by Fuji Precision Industries. Subaru later designed its own 1.5 liter water-cooled four cylinder engine, which was 20% lighter than the Peugeot unit it replaced. Only 20 1500s were built, with some serving as taxis in Gunma, Japan. Due to an unestablished market and lack of mass production capability, the project was scrapped in favor of the Shinroku led Subaru 360 project.



Work resumed on a compact car entry in 1960, with two separate projects being examined in parallel. One project was a continuation of the 1500, known at the A-5. The other project was a smaller compact car, known as the A-4. These two projects would lead to one combined effort, the 63A, with the project more closely following the developments of the A-4. The biggest debate of the initial design was determining the drivetrain layout and ultimately the drivetrain. After design goals were evaluated, five design conditions were laid out that needed to be met:

1. Considering the size, adopt a layout that offers good interior comfort, wide trunk space and plenty of baggage room inside the car and makes it easy to conduct maintenance inspections. 2. Strive to keep weight down. 3. Adopt four-wheel independent suspension in order to enhance ride quality and stability. 4. Aim for good durability based on painstaking design and practical durability testing. 5. Secure reliability from low speeds to high speeds by improving in mountain and high-speed testing.

It was eventually determined that the new project would utilize a front wheel drive layout, rather than the rear wheel drive layout utilized in previous projects.

It is interesting to note that the term “FF” (front engine, front wheel drive) is believed to have originated from Subaru engineers using the term internally during the design of the 1000. Subaru started using the acronym in their brochures as a catchy advertising term, which seemed to catch on in the industry.


Once the drivetrain layout was determined, the drivetrain itself needed to be designed. Lead designer Shinroku Momose instructed designers that the engine for the new front wheel drive sedan to be developed could be any configuration as long as it satisfied five conditions:

The differential gear must be located on the center line of the car body in order to make the drive shaft operating angle as small as possible. The location of pedals is decided to make driving easy for the driver, and cannot be changed. The engine height must be low in order to keep the center of gravity down and increase the degree of flexibility in body design. The front overhang needs to be shortened, since the vehicle is FWD. Vibration should be reduced in order to enhance the ride quality.

Three engine configurations were determined to be able to satisfy these five conditions; a transversely mounted in-line four-cylinder engine, a longitudinally mounted V-type four-cylinder engine, or a longitudinally mounted horizontally opposed four-cylinder engine. The V-type four-cylinder was excluded almost immediately, due to concerns about difficulties in reducing the vibrations with the technology they had available to them at the time. This left the transverse inline four-cylinder and the longitudinal horizontally opposed four-cylinder. In front wheel drive car development during this time, driveshaft joints were the most difficult problem. The engineers as Subaru wished to devise a way to keep the stress on the driveshaft joints to a minimum. This could be accomplished easily with the use of equal length driveshafts. Of the two engine configuration choices remaining, one had a significant advantage in the ease at which the front driveshafts could be made equal length. Ultimately, the horizontally opposed four-cylinder was chosen; a trademark engineering detail that continues in Subaru’s full size passenger vehicles to this day.




Development of this new engine commenced, with several goals laid out: compact, light, powerful, and reliable. The new engine would be water cooled, and use a 2 valve per cylinder pushrod configuration. (Studies of an air-cooled engine returned unfavorable performance results). Aluminum was chosen as the material for the block and the heads. Although aluminum was significantly more expensive than cast iron, the decision resulted in a significantly lighter engine assembly. The final product resulted in the EA52, Subaru’s first production Boxer engine. The 977 CC engine produced 55 hp and 57 ft-lbs of torque with a relatively high 9.0:1 compression ratio. It also weighed 15% less than an inline four-cylinder engine of comparable displacement. The development of the EA52 can be considered one of the first cases where the weight of the engine was considered in the pursuit of vehicle and engine performance. The EA52 was also very refined for its time. In fact, during a two-minute trial operation while the new car was displayed at the 12th Annual Tokyo Motor Show, it is said* that most visitors did not even notice that the engine was running due to how quiet and smooth the engine ran.


*(Knowing older Subaru engines, I do doubt the validity of that claim)


The unique engineering of the 1000 did not stop with the engine and drivetrain; over 30 mechanical patents were granted for this car alone. The front brakes consisted of inboard mounted front drums. This was to reduce un-sprung weight, simplify the implementation of an independent front suspension setup, and to help prevent dirt and debris from entering the braking system. The 1000 also had a unique cooling system. Rather than using a large radiator and big cooling fan, the new Subaru used a dual radiator setup consisting of a main radiator and a sub-radiator. Only the sub-radiator would be used until medium and high speed driving was reached. Under heavy loads, a small electric fan would activate to cool the sub-radiator. The result was an engine that stayed cool, while reducing load on the engine and silencing unnecessary fan noise. During the winter months, the sub-radiator would provide heat to the passenger compartment in place of a heater core. Subaru claimed this system provided the heating capability of an engine twice the size. The car utilized four-wheel independent suspension, with wishbones up front and trailing arms and coil springs in the rear. True to their considerations of large passenger and luggage space, the spare tire was located under the hood, above and behind the engine. This design detail, facilitated by the low, flat nature of the Boxer engine, would carry on into the early 1990s.




The 1000 was the beginning of a new era for Subaru. It officially went on sale on May 14, 1966 with only a sedan as an option. The 1000 would evolve into a full model lineup, with coupe and wagon body styles added later. Several performance versions were developed through the lifecycle of the vehicle; the ultimate being the 92 horsepower FF-1 1300G Sports Sedan and Super Touring. The 1000 would also be used as the testbed for the first 4WD Subaru models in 1971. An evolution of the 1000, the FF-1 Star, made its debut on US shores in 1969, giving Americans the first true taste of what Subaru had to offer besides the 360, which was misunderstood and out of place in the US market. The FF-1 Star was surprisingly popular for an import at the time, attracting drivers with its high fuel economy and low price. The 1000 was succeeded by the Leone in 1972, and ultimately, the Impreza in 1992. The Subaru models of today are quite different from the original 1000, but the basic DNA is still apparent. Fifty years may not seem like a long time as far as automobile companies are concerned, but it is impressive to see how far Subaru has come in that amount of time, and where the next fifty years may take them.


(Special thanks to Subaru Philosophy and Sakura.ne.jp for source information. Additional photo credits here and here.)