Subaru is to offer its first diesel engine in the Legacy range next year.
The engine, designed and developed in-house, is thought to have a similar 'boxer' layout to Subaru's flat-four and flat-six petrol engines, as it will be built on the same production lines. It will also work in conjunction with Subaru's four-wheel-drive system.
Bringing this forward to production has been made possible by Toyota taking a 8.7% shareholding in Subaru; Toyota is to supply its hybrid technology to Subaru, which is too small to afford to bring such expensive systems to production by itself.
Subaru chief executive Kyoji Takenaka said: 'Because we're a small company, we had to choose between hybrid and diesel. Now that we have this arrangement with Toyota, diesel engine development and production are going to be our priority& we're hoping to get it to market some time around the end of 2007, or 2008.'
The Subaru hybrids will come later, however.
Subaru expects around half of its European sales to be of diesel models by 2010 and then around a third of all its sales - including, ultimately, up to 20% of sales in Japan and the US.
Takenaka went on to tell reporters that the relationship with Toyota would not necessarily compromise Subaru's independence, though Toyota has now replaced General Motors as the firm's largest shareholder. He expects the firm to remain as an independent partner, much as Yamaha works with Toyota.
'We're a pretty stubborn bunch,' he said. 'We never managed to blend in with Nissan Motor Co or GM when we were allied with them. We'll preserve our independence.'
However, he sees the chance to learn much from Toyota in terms of the reduction in production costs and speeding up product development.
http://www.channel4.com/4car/news/news- ... s_id=14266
