The Subaru 1500 is the first car built by

Fuji Heavy Industries is a Japanese multinational corporation and conglomerate primarily involved in both terrestrial and aerospace transportation manufacturing. It is best known for its line of Subaru automobiles. Founded in 1953, the company was formerly named ( ...

, with the development code-name of P1. The prototype used a

monocoque Monocoque ( ), also called structural skin, is a structural system in which loads are supported by an object's external skin, in a manner similar to an egg shell. The word ''monocoque'' is a French term for "single shell". First used for boats, ...

body structure and adopting the " ponton" style appearance, with an independent front

wishbone suspension A double wishbone suspension is an independent suspension design for automobiles using two (occasionally parallel) wishbone-shaped arms to locate the wheel. Each wishbone or arm has two mounting points to the chassis and one joint at the knuckl ...

and a rear

leaf spring suspension A leaf spring is a simple form of spring (device), spring commonly used for the suspension (vehicle), suspension in wheeled vehicles. Originally called a ''laminated'' or ''carriage spring'', and sometimes referred to as a semi-elliptical spring, ...

with three plates and a live rear axle. The company was already manufacturing the

Fuji Rabbit The Fuji Rabbit is a motor scooter produced in Japan by Fuji Heavy Industries (now Subaru Corporation) from 1946 through 1968. The Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan rates the Fuji Rabbit S-1 model introduced in 1946 as one of their ''240 ...

scooter, and wanted to explore manufacturing an automobile to compete with established Japanese manufacturing efforts at the time. The P-1 was

water-cooled Cooling tower and water discharge of a nuclear power plant Water cooling is a method of heat removal from components and industrial equipment. Evaporative cooling using water is often more efficient than air cooling. Water is inexpensive and non ...

and used two different 1.5 litre

OHV An overhead valve (OHV) engine, sometimes called a ''pushrod engine'', is a piston engine whose valves are located in the cylinder head above the combustion chamber. This contrasts with earlier flathead engines, where the valves were located bel ...

four-cylinder inline engines. The original version, code named "FG4A", was sourced from

Peugeot Peugeot (, , ) is a French brand of automobiles owned by Stellantis. The family business that preceded the current Peugeot companies was founded in 1810, with a steel foundry that soon started making hand tools and kitchen equipment, and the ...

's 202 and built by Fuji Precision Technology (this later became the

Prince Motor Company The Prince Motor Company (Japanese: ) was an automobile marque from Japan which eventually merged into Nissan in 1966. It began as the Tachikawa Aircraft Company, a manufacturer of various airplanes for the Japanese Army in World War II, e.g. ...

). The FG4A engine was related to the Prince GA4 with some modification, and was shared with the

Prince Sedan The Prince Sedan was a Japanese compact executive car made from 1952 until 1957 by the Tama Motor Company (renamed the Prince Motor Company in November 1952), which was one of the successors of the Tachikawa Aircraft Company. It was replaced by ...

introduced in 1952. Prince had not agreed to Fuji Precision Technology providing this engine to a competing car and

found themselves obliged to develop a different engine in-house. This was code named "L4-1"; it was also a 1.5 litre OHV engine but it was 20 percent lighter than the previous engine used. Maximum power is for the FG4A, for the L4-1. Only 20 P-1's were built, all in 1954, with 11 vehicles using the FG4A engine, with the remaining nine cars using the updated L4-1 engine. 14 of the 20 cars were built for private use, while the other six units were provided to the taxi companies in Isesaki, Ota and Honjo Cities for private testing, with successful results. Subaru had been very confident in the car's abilities, but with both Toyota (

Corona Corona (from the Latin for 'crown') most commonly refers to: * Stellar corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun or another star * Corona (beer), a Mexican beer * Corona, informal term for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the COVID-19 di ...

) and Prince (

Skyline A skyline is the outline or shape viewed near the horizon. It can be created by a city’s overall structure, or by human intervention in a rural setting, or in nature that is formed where the sky meets buildings or the land. City skyline ...

) about to release new cars in the 1500 cc class they considered the market situation impossible without a very large investment in mass manufacturing capabilities. It was Subaru's first vehicle, and the company would not produce another front-engine/rear-wheel drive vehicle until the BRZ in 2012.

References

Official Website

Subaru History website (japanese)
{{Subaru (early) First car made by manufacturer 1500 "P-1" Sedans Cars introduced in 1954