Yahoo Autos From the Archives: 1969 Subaru 1000 Sports First Test
Give it another 20 lbs. of sound deadening and another 30 days in the suspension laboratory and the Subaru 1000 Sports threatens to be the best 1000cc sports sedan yet made.
One of a family of cars built by a branch of Japan's Fuji Heavy Industries Group, this top-of-the-line sports model has design specifications to make little car fans whistle through their teeth—like 81 hp per liter, all-independent torsion bar suspension, quarter-mile times in the low 19s, a top speed of 95 mph and, in Japan at least, a price tag of under $2000.
In concept, the Subaru Sports is the logical successor to the bug-eyed Austin-Healey Sprite, the original low cost sports car of the Sixties. With only two seats, the Sprite was never an everyman's sports car, and it tended to cling to the British tradition of sacrificing creature comfort in the interest of maintaining a reasonable miniature high-performance/low-cost ratio. For its size, the Subaru 1000 Sports makes no compromise. It is a real automobile in its class, almost quiet, comfortable, weatherproofed, heated and cooled to perfection—with as much luggage space as a China clipper. Just as important, it has performance figures that only the fastest of the road-going Sprites achieved in their heyday. What we're saying is that the diminutive Subaru stands to become the everyman's sports car of the Seventies. That is, if its makers ever decide to unleash it in the United States free of excessive mark-up and supported with a decent parts and service organization.
The car is a derivative of the Subaru 1000 Sedan. It shares the same body-chassis unit and almost all mechanical components are common to both. The 1000 Sports gets a new camshaft and a pair of constant vacuum carburetors. The steering is quickened, disc brakes replace drums on the front wheels and the inside is decorated with the deluxe trim package —there's little wrong in that when a 2-door, 4-passenger sedan still ends up weighing 1500 lbs. at the curb.
Low weight is one reason why the thing covers a quarter like a whippet. The other, naturally enough, is the engine. Subaru may just have come up with one of the most outstanding baby piston engines in this decade and the next. It's a 4-cylinder opposed corn-popper with a split aluminum crankcase, aluminum cylinder heads and removable wet cylinder liners. The crankshaft is liberally supported via three main bearings, and the valves are actuated by a single camshaft, pushrods and rocker arms. Completing a very cursory description, the Subaru has bathtub combustion chambers and flat-top pistons. You could get away with calling the engine a cross between a water-cooled Volkswagen and a Lloyd Arabella, except that it pours out all that hp per liter. Imagine a 427 Corvette putting out an honest 570 hp off the showroom floor. And the fact is that the Subaru pulls like Paul Bunyan's ox, Babe, from 2000 rpm all the way to 7500.
Flexibility is hardly the word; it's at least as flexible as Eugene McCarthy or a Mexican bus schedule. So it's definitely not a car for those who enjoy gearshift flagellation—although the fully synchromesh transmission works superbly, through a short, well placed change lever. The flexibility apparently comes from the variable venturi carburetors, the combination of small intake ports and large valves and very considerable development work. The engine starts and runs flawlessly, hot or cold, with a minimum of noise and vibration. Today's producers of small displacement sedans would do well to examine it closely. Behind the engine is a diaphram spring clutch, an effortless device at the pedal level, and a transaxle unit. The final drive goes to the front wheels through two constant velocity joints for each halfshaft—but unless the Subaru is pushed to the limit it's not easy to tell that this is a front-wheel-drive vehicle. The usual effects of the front-wheel-drive phenomenon, which can occupy great tracts of road tests, simply aren't here. There is no snatching at the steering wheel and a minimum of nosing in or out with or without power. On the limit the Subaru lifts its rear wheel gracefully but, unlike its bug-eyed predecessor, there is obviously no question of the tach needle swinging across the dial accompanied by the sound of an exploding engine. The whole combination of engine and transmission works so well that by the time you've driven the 1000 Sports a mile up the road you imagine you're driving a stout 1500 instead of a 1000. Poleaxing larger cars with this Japanese mini-machine is a straightforward and delightful part of the Subaru's function. But there are drawbacks.
It only takes a couple of bulges in the asphalt to bring back the realization that the car is, after all, only a low cost substitute for the real thing. The imperfect harshness control of the suspension system and the negative effects on ride comfort and noise transmission is the Achilles heel of an otherwise unimpeachable automobile.
Starting at the front, the suspension system is unoriginal, at the rear the best that can be said is that it is ingenious. On the front, the four control arms—two longitudinal torsion bars and two shock-absorbers—are all mounted on a tubular sub-frame attached to the body shell with rubber isolators. There is no sway bar, and the rack-and-pinion steering gear is mounted on the same subframe below the transmission.
At the back, trailing arms hinge around a tube running across the car and form part of a structure that includes the mounts for the upper ends of the inclined tubular shocks. The sub-chassis, like its counterpart at the front, is separated from the chassis by rubber isolators.
The rear suspension's ingenuity lies in the successful combination of bump and roll control in a minimum of space with a minimum number of parts. On the axis, around which the trailing arms hinge, there are two short torsion bars, splined at their outer ends into the trailing arms, and at their inboard ends into a free-floating reaction block that pushes against a short high rate vertical coil spring. When both rear wheels rise together the torsion bars turn about their common axis, causing the reaction block to rotate against the coil spring so that the bump stiffness of the suspension, during its initial travel, is the result of the stiffness of the coil spring. Raising the wheels further still, as when hitting a bad bump or with the car fully laden, causes the coil spring to wind up, which in turn causes the torsion bars to begin acting like springs rather than just simple transmission shafts. The rear suspension in bump can therefore have two stiffness factors, which is a very desirable feature when dealing with a light car capable of carrying up to half of its curb weight in passengers and luggage. If the coil spring is sufficiently soft a good boulevard ride can be had, while still maintaining suspension that is hard to bottom.
In roll, that is when one wheel rises and the other falls, the torsion bars work against one another, joined as they are by the reaction block, and the action of the coil spring is cancelled. The roll stiffness at the rear therefore is the result of the short, stiff torsion bars, the advantage being in making the latter do two jobs.
This setup makes for an interesting but hairy ride for the first 50 or 60 miles of driving at anything approaching sustained speeds. The combination of ultra-quick steering and the roll stiffness at the rear makes the car darty and nervous, giving the distinct impression that it's either going to leap clear off the road or turn turtle at the very next moment of crisis. In fact it's not about to do either, and after you've realized this it comes as a relief to find that the handling characteristics are neutral and easily controllable. But don't get us wrong, it takes getting used to. As does the combination of quick throttle response and soft engine mounts which produces a leapfrogging tendency crawling along in stop-and-go traffic.
Apart from these idiosyncrasies the car is well thought out and easy to live with. The dashboard is fully instrumented, the steering wheel, pedals, emergency brake and turn signals arc all well-placed and easy to operate. And, contrary to the tank slits supplied in most small cam, visibility is very good. The door handles, inside and out, are an ergonometric joy to operate. Under the hood the engine oil dipstick and oil filler arc equally well located and easy to reach. The clutch free-play adjustment doesn't require all kinds of tools or a trained mechanic on a Jeepers-Creepers. You simply lift the hood, remove the spare tire (ah yes, innovation is everywhere) and, apart from the clutch adjustment, all manner of minor service jobs can be quickly taken care of. The Japanese Bendix electric fuel pump hidden under the spare is something of a surprise, and the surprises don't end there. Inside, the Subaru is hardly a mini-brute. An average-sized American, whoever that is, will find the combination of cavernous legroom and reclining front seats make the car comfortable to take further than the station. And it's not like sitting on a cushion on the floor either. The seats are well dimensioned and well sprung.
The heating and cooling system does a very reasonable job, considering the price and class of the car, and also shows more original thought. Subaru engineers combined the cooling system for the engine with the heating system of the passenger compartment, saving a radiator and a fan in the process. Air drawn through the cooling radiator by the squirrel cage blower is ducted to the interior and, since the system is thermostatically controlled, the warm-up time is relatively short. Fresh air is available through a cowl-mounted intake.
Esthetically speaking, the Subaru is like most of the Japanese products in the automotive field. It suffers from a total lack of personality; it is neither attractive nor unattractive. It's slightly reminiscent of the Fiat 124, the Ford Model C and the Opel Kadett, all wrapped into one and stamped "Utility Model." The test car was styled in Japan for the Japanese market, which probably explains why it was so thin skinned. The sheet metal looks and feels about as solid as old rice paper or an acid-dipped Penske Camaro, but the general standard of finish is surprisingly good.
There you have it. If you ignore the "real automobile" aspects of the Subaru what's left is a cheap, hard-riding car with a lot of goufu; not wholly unlike its anticedent, the bug-eyed Sprite. But the Japanese have managed to condense many "real automobile" features into the car to even get this far. What needs to be done now is to persuade Subaru to bury the 360, which is nothing short of a mechanised chamber pot, in a convenient watermelon patch and start importing the 1000 Sports to the USA. At the present time that looks like a remote possibility, what with emission regulations being what they are, but there is a Subaru 1000 sedan already on its way, so who can be certain.
Specifications >
VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, front-wheel-drive, 4-passenger, 2-door coupe
ENGINE TYPE: pushrod 8-valve flat-4, aluminum block and heads, 2x1-bbl Solex carburetor
Displacement: 60 cu in, 977 cc
Power: 79 hp @ 6600 rpm
Torque: 69 lb-ft @ 4600 rpm
TRANSMISSION: 4-speed manual
DIMENSIONS:
Wheelbase: 95.3 in
Length: 155.0 in
Width: 58.3 in Height: 55.0 in
Curb weight: 1500 lb
C/D TEST RESULTS:
Zero to 60 mph: 11.5 sec
Zero to 80 mph: 20.0 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 19.0 @ 78 mph
