Subaru Legacy diesel: 15.1.08, Malaga World's first boxer oil-burner is a landmark engine in more ways than one

摘要

SUBARU SELLS JUST 600,000 cars a year - half in Japan, most of the rest in countries where you'd barely measure the interest in a small diesel engine with a micrometer. Yet Subaru has just developed, on its own and purely because its European retailers asked it to, the first boxer diesel ever fitted to a car. It might end up selling only 30,000 diesel-powered cars a year; in most countries it won't be sold at all and its design is so restrictive that no other manufacturer will buy it. Subaru's justification for the project is this: "Our petrol engines are boxers because they're light, compact, smooth and mate easily to a 4wd transmission if aligned just so. So our diesels must be the same."