Tweedehands Subaru

Subaru grew out of an aircraft company. Fuji Heavy Industries built its first car, the tiny 360, in 1958, and named the brand after the Pleiades star cluster that still forms its badge. Two engineering choices made early on have defined it ever since: the flat boxer engine and symmetrical all-wheel drive.

Those choices paid off spectacularly in the 1990s, when Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Petter Solberg won world rally titles in blue-and-gold Imprezas and turned the WRX STI into a hero car for a generation. The Legacy and Outback did the quieter work of winning over anyone who lived at the end of a snowy road.

Today Subaru sells the Crosstrek, Forester and Outback with e-Boxer hybrid power, and the electric Solterra and Uncharted developed with Toyota, plus the BRZ for people who still want a rear-driven coupe. The formula is unchanged: go-anywhere ability without shouting about it.