Subaru took the time this week to highlight a meaningful milestone it recently hit, this after the automaker built the 20 millionth all-wheel-drive vehicle in its history last month.
The company was founded back in 1953, but it wasn’t until 1972 that it started to make AWD-equipped cars. How times have changed, of course. Today, 98 percent of the brand’s global sales come with the company’s vaunted symmetrical all-wheel-drive system, generally considered one of the finest such systems in the world.
Perhaps the biggest single factor in explaining the brand’s success in recent decades with its AWD vehicles is that it has since 1996 been offered standard in all its models (with the exception of the sporty WRX model); this is one of the first things loyal fans cite for their fealty.
The all-wheel drive system of course works in tandem with another distinctively Subaru component, the boxer engine. Together they allow for a low centre of gravity and optimal weight distribution, and thus better handling. Ask any Subaru owner; they’ll confirm it.
Back in 1972, Japan’s first all-wheel-drive passenger car to reach large numbers of buyers was the Leone 4WD Estate Van. The American market got its first AWD Subaru three years later, in 1975, when the the DL/GL Wagon was offered with it for the first time.
At that time it was actually an on-demand 4WD system, which would later give way to a full-time all-wheel traction system. That eventually begat the symmetrical AWD we know today.
As it starts in on its second 20 million AWD vehicles built, Subaru is planning to retain the system as it develops its first crop of all-electric models, starting with the Solterra that was announced this past May.