"No, I don't thank you for the fish at all" (notindetroit)
07/09/2015 at 14:32 • Filed to: aero-subaru
3
5|
"No, I don't thank you for the fish at all" (notindetroit)
07/09/2015 at 14:32 • Filed to: aero-subaru | 3
| 5 |
That’s a question I’ve asked a number of aviation historians I’ve met, unfortunately to no avail as they weren’t sure themselves. But wait a minute, you ask, why would I even be asking aviation experts about a car in the first place?
Before Subaru became Subaru they were a branch of Fuji Heavy Industries which back during WWII were Nakijima Heavy Industries, who primarily built warplanes for the Imperial Japanese military (including the torpedo bombers that did everything from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the last-ditch Kamikazie attacks as American fleets encroached on the home islands). In the 1960s they built a light four-seat general aviation/personal commuter plane called - ta-da! - the Aero-Subaru (pictured above). It turned out to be an extremely slow seller in a nation where 95% of the population lived next door to each other and thus didn’t really have much of a need or desire to fly a personal aircraft, nor on the export market where Cessna and Piper dominated and nobody was interested in buying dat der dang rice-burner designed for Kamikazies (this was still an era where it was considered amazingly progressive and forward-thinking just for Star Trek to cast George Takei, who prior to that point had mostly played either Imperial Japanese Army officers or other shadowy bad-guy figures of questionable or no moral character).
The story goes that the birth of the boxer engine from the Subaru car came as a direct result of the poor-selling Aero-Subaru - flooded with an excess of otherwise unsaleable airplane engines (which were air-cooled boxers as is still popular today) they simply stuffed them in cars and called it a day. This doesn’t really hold much water as the Aero-Subaru’s engine, the American-made and imported Lycoming O-320 had a displacement just short of an LS1 and wouldn’t physically fit in a Subaru 360 unless you converted the entire passenger compartment into an engine bay. There might still be a connection between Subaru’s airplane and car manufacturing efforts, though - they may have adopted a boxer engine to try to tie-in their cars directly with their airplanes at least in consumer’s minds and promote a better engineering connection than what a “Born From Jets” advertising slogan might suggest (no offense to Saab fans!)
Image credit Huhu Uet via Wikipedia
coelacanthist
> No, I don't thank you for the fish at all
07/09/2015 at 14:59 |
|
Looks like a neat little plane. I dig the sliding canopy. Its like a Navion and a Tomahawk were left alone in the hanger one long and lonely night.
Jcarr
> No, I don't thank you for the fish at all
07/09/2015 at 15:03 |
|
Here’s a big Lycoming IO-720 that was on display at the EAA museum last summer.
|
coelacanthist
> No, I don't thank you for the fish at all
07/09/2015 at 16:14 |
|
I wonder if there is any WWII connection to Porsche/VW... Shared technology between axis powers?
DoYouEvenShift
> No, I don't thank you for the fish at all
07/12/2015 at 00:07 |
|
Dammit Fuji! Why couldn’t it have been radial engines? Then Subaru’s today could be radial powered. Also people would call them “circle-jerk” engines instead of boxer engines. Haha.
Berang
> No, I don't thank you for the fish at all
07/25/2015 at 09:36 |
|
If you do a little digging you’ll find some consensus that the Subaru flat four was copied from Goliath’s flat four. Goliath had conveniently gone under with Borgward at just about the same time Subaru began to think about front wheel drive. Goliath produced a flat 4 + front drive car that was relatively advanced when it came out.
Subaru on the other hand claims they had already been testing an air-cooled 1.5 liter flat four before they started on the smaller water cooler. It is probably just a coincidence that they began that project at the time Goliath disappeared. On the other hand Subarus engineers kept an eye on European cars as was well demonstrated by the Subaru 360’s development.
The Aero-Subaru did not reach production until after Subaru began making the 1000, but it would be interesting if there were some relationship.