In 1972, Subaru’s all-wheel-drive story did not begin with rallying, ski resorts or lifestyle marketing. It began with an electric company.
Tohoku Electric Power Company needed passenger vehicles capable of reaching remote infrastructure through the brutal winters of northern Japan. Four-wheel-drive trucks could do the job, but they were crude and uncomfortable. Subaru responded by developing experimental 4WD passenger cars, work that ultimately led to the Leone 4WD Estate Van and a formula that would become central to the company’s identity.
Fifty years later, Subaru celebrated that history with a beautifully simple Japanese web film called SUBARU AWD 50th “AWD’s Tandem”. Rather than filling a studio with static museum pieces, Subaru brought historic AWD models from its own collection onto its Tochigi proving grounds and sent them around the track together.
The procession is a rolling family tree. Leone, Legacy, Impreza, Forester and other familiar shapes appear, along with some wonderfully strange branches. Look closely and there is even a Subaru XT, known in Japan as the Alcyone, the futuristic wedge my father drove years ago and an obvious spiritual ancestor to my SVX.
So how did I miss this in 2022?
Probably because the film was aimed primarily at the Japanese market. It lived on Subaru’s Japanese “On-Tube” YouTube presence and never received the kind of North American advertising push that would have put it in front of every Subaru enthusiast over here. Even Subaru’s English-language 50th-anniversary material focused more on AWD milestones than on promoting the film itself.
Four years late is still better than never. This is Subaru history doing exactly what old cars should do: moving.