Start with what the Subaru 1500 is: a Sedan with 1.5 L FG4A Overhead valve engine, built from 1954, at the height of the post-war boom. What it meant takes a little longer. The shape is credited to Shinroku Momose.
Where it came from
The Subaru 1500 is the first car built by Fuji Heavy Industries, with the development code-name of P1. The prototype used a monocoque body structure and adopting the "ponton" style appearance, with an independent front wishbone suspension and a rear leaf spring suspension with three plates and a live rear axle. The company was already manufacturing the Fuji Rabbit scooter, and wanted to explore manufacturing an automobile to compete with established Japanese manufacturing efforts at the time. The P-1 was water-cooled and used two different 1.5 litre OHV four-cylinder inline engines. The original version, code named "FG4A", was sourced from Peugeot's 202 and built by Fuji Precision Technology (this later became the Prince Motor Company). The FG4A engine was related to the Prince GA4 with some modification, and was shared with the Prince Sedan introduced in 1952.
Prince had not agreed to Fuji Precision Technology providing this engine to a competing car and Fuji Heavy Industries 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 48 PS (35 kW; 47 bhp) for the FG4A, 55 PS (40 kW; 54 bhp) 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. Suba
Under the skin
The engine is 1.5 L FG4A Overhead valve engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. On the scales it comes to 1230 kg. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
In context
The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, the Chevrolet Corvette. Nearby in the Subaru catalogue sit the Subaru Chiffon and the Subaru Lucra.
Owning one today
MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Subaru 1500 has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.
Subaru1953