Subaru celebrates fifty years of its boxer engines today

In 2016 the first half century has passed since Subaru introduced a boxer-type engine in one of its models. As all motoring enthusiasts know, the Japanese brand currently remains faithful to this idea.

On 14 May 1966 the Subaru 1000 appeared, the first car from the brand to fit an engine with cylinders arranged horizontally, in two banks and in an opposed configuration. That first boxer engine delivered a maximum power of 55 horsepower. Today, with the Subaru WRX STI, the boxer-type powerplant reaches 300 horsepower in a series-production car, although the brand’s most modest offering makes do with a 1.6-litre 114 horsepower unit in the entry-level model, the Subaru XV.

Over the past fifty years to the present day, more than 16 million boxer engines have been marketed by Subaru. Moreover, we are not only talking about petrol powerplants, but also diesel; making it the only brand in the world that dares to do so.

Apart from being a hallmark and a “mechanical style”, the engine with horizontally opposed cylinders has the particularity of not taking up much height; that is, it is a wide but not tall powerplant. This helps considerably to lower the centre of gravity, so it achieves greater stability, agility and dynamism, both at low speeds on winding roads and on the motorway.

In the Subaru brand, in all cases except the Subaru BRZ sports car, the boxer engine, whether petrol or diesel, is combined with the brand’s prestigious permanent all-wheel drive system, called Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive. This symmetrical all-wheel drive system surpassed 15 million units during last March.

In short, it is a milestone that Subaru continues to use the same type of engine, with the same essence, that it did fifty years ago.

Source | Subaru