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Subaru to drop industrial products, focus on making cars

Subaru, the company formerly known as Fuji Heavy Industries, said Monday it is ceasing production of its industrial products after more than 60 years in order to focus on its core automotive business. The change was effective Sept. 30. "By concentrating management resources on Subaru's core automotive business, the company will further reinforce its business structure in the aim of substantially enhancing the Subaru brand and achieving even greater sustainable growth," the company said in a statement. The move appears to mark the culmination of a steady retrenchment from its industrial business. Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. last year announced it was changing its name to Subaru Corp. in order to strengthen the brand and focus on its core automotive and aerospace business. It also moved to integrate its Industrial Products Company within Subaru's automotive business effective Oct. 1, 2016. Subaru is a Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster, and it symbolizes the six companies that merged to form Fuji Heavy Industries in 1953. Subaru's aerospace division is a contractor for the Japan Defense Agency. The automaker's industrial products business began in 1951 when its former Omiya Fuji Industries Co. Ltd. began production of the 540 cc M6 engine. Subaru says its Industrial Products Co. Ltd. affiliate will continue to handle after-sales service of Subaru-built generators, pumps and engines used in construction, agriculture and industrial equipment. The company also says it will cease manufacturing engines for installation in other vehicles as supply contracts expire. Meanwhile, Subaru is busy reorganizing its plant in Lafayette, Ind., to begin production of the Ascent, a three-row, eight-passenger crossover based on its Viziv-7 concept that debuted late last year. Related Video:

2020 Subaru Legacy, Outback earn IIHS safety picks

The redesigned 2020 Subaru Legacy sedan and Outback wagon both earned kudos from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, but the news was not equally good for both models. The Legacy sedan walked away with the highest award, Top Safety Pick+. The Outback was one rung down, a Top Safety Pick. Sadly for the Outback, the previous, 2019 model had nabbed the TSP+ score. Why the difference in the Legacy and Outback? In a word: headlights. The IIHS structures their awards around several elements: crash tests, crash-avoidance systems, and headlights. Both Subarus aced their crash tests, earning Good results for the entire battery of tests (small and moderate front overlap on both sides, roof crush, side-impact, and head-restraints). Their standard EyeSight accident-avoidance automated emergency braking systems also performed well, successfully avoiding crashes at 12 and 25 mph, netting Superior ratings. (The pedestrian-detection function similarly earned a Superior rating, although pedestrian detection doesn't count toward the IIHS total score.) Headlights have to earn a Good rating in order for a car to qualify for TSP+; headlights deemed merely Acceptable limit a car to a maximum TSP award. Headlights that are Marginal or lower knock a car out of TSP contention. The Legacy's optional curve-adaptive headlights were deemed Good, while those same headlights in the Outback were only Acceptable, resulting in the different awards for the two models. For both cars, the base headlights also were Acceptable, meaning either model with the standard headlights would be a TSP (except that the IIHS grants a single model only its higher-level award).

2019 Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid gets top IIHS safety rating

The IIHS has finally evaluated the 2019 Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid, the plug-in version of the subcompact crossover, and it performs just as well as its fully gas-powered twin. Its high marks earned it the organization's highest award of Top Safety Pick +. In every crash test, the Crosstrek earned the highest "Good" rating for protection, including both driver and passenger small overlap collisions. Forward collision prevention also earned top marks, stopping the vehicle before a crash at speeds up to 25 mph. This is one area where the Hybrid improves on the standard model, not for better results, but for the fact that the forward collision prevention system is standard on all Hybrid variants. It's an option on base and Premium non-hybrid Crosstreks. The headlights are a similar situation. The Hybrid's standard headlights also received the "Good" rating like top-trim Crosstreks. Where the non-hybrid Crosstreks trip up is that the base and Premium trims have headlights that have the worst "Poor" rating. Parity resumes with LATCH child seat anchor accessibility, which gets a "Good+" rating for having easily reachable anchors and having extras for seating flexibility.