What is "subaru"

Subaru is a Japanese automobile brand of Fuji Heavy Industries. It may also refer to:

• Subaru, a Japanese term for Pleiades (star cluster)
• Subaru (telescope), a telescope in Hawaii operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
• Subaru (literary magazine), published in Japan from 1909–1913
• Subaru (song), a Japanese song sung by Shinji Tanimura
• Subaru (name), a Japanese given name and surname

, is the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster. It is a given name in Japanese, used for both males and females.

( or ; ) is the automobile manufacturing division of Japanese transportation conglomerate Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI), the twenty-second biggest automaker by production worldwide in 2012.

Subaru cars are known for the use of a boxer engine layout in most vehicles above 1500 cc. Most Subaru models have used the Symmetrical All Wheel Drive drive-train layout since 1972. The flat/boxer engine and all-wheel-drive became standard equipment for mid-size and smaller cars in most international markets by 1996, and is now standard in most North American market Subaru vehicles. The lone exception is the BRZ, introduced in 2012, which uses the boxer engine but instead uses a rear-wheel-drive structure. Subaru also offers turbocharged versions of their passenger cars, such as the Impreza WRX and the Legacy 2.5GT. The 2.5XT trims of the Outback and Forester also include a turbocharged engine.

In Western markets, the Subaru brand has traditionally been popular among a dedicated core of buyers. Marketing is targeted towards a specific niche centered on those who desire the company's signature drive train.

Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster M45, or "The Seven Sisters" (one of whom tradition says is invisible – hence only six stars in the Subaru logo), which in turn inspires the logo and alludes to the companies that merged to create FHI.

was a literary magazine published monthly in Japan between January 1909 and December 1913. The name of the publisher was , written in kanji as opposed to the magazine title written in katakana.

Subaru was the spiritual successor to the better-known and longer-running magazine Myōjō. It mainly focused on the publication of poetry and was known for the its advocacy of the trend of romanticism in Japanese literature in the late Meiji period (1868 – 1912). It was priced at 30 sen (0.3 yen) and ultimately published 60 issues in total.