A Subaru Innovation:  The Subaru Boxer

Look under the hood of any Subaru and you'll find a key difference between these vehicles and their competition: The Subaru boxer engine.

Renowned for delivering performance, efficiency, reliability and longevity, the horizontally opposed engine is a design concept that the engineers at Subaru have devoted more than 25 years to developing and refining.

The Subaru boxer engine offers numerous advantages over conventional engine designs. Its lower height allows for improved vehicle aerodynamics, while a low center of gravity benefits handling.

The engine is mounted longitudinally for a symmetrical drivetrain layout, to help balance the car's overall weight distribution. This layout is ideally suited to All-Wheel Drive vehicles, since the main driveshaft is already oriented front-to-rear. So even before power is sent to the wheels, the All-Wheel Drive Subaru is designed for optimizing traction and handling performance.

In-line engines, common in other cars, place all pistons in a vertical alignment. This requires a long, heavy crankshaft located at the bottom of the engine block, where it's more likely to generate vibration. In fact, many in-line engine designs use separate balance shafts in an attempt to quell the vibration.

In the Subaru boxer engine, the pistons are placed in horizontal opposition to each other. The punch/counter-punch of the opposed pistons helps to cancel vibrations. And the boxer's compact size and low center of gravity even increase handling stability.

The result? Smoother, more responsive performance with less engine wear.