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When Subaru entered F1 and failed so what really happened to the Japanese manufacturer?
Dreams and reality often collide, for Subaru, that happened in 1990 when they decided to enter F1 in 1990.
The dream of Subaru in F1
By the late 1980s, Japan was becoming a dominant force in global motorsport, in F1 Honda was powering McLaren, the team that dominated.
Subaru under Fuji industries, wanted to share in that spotlight, its boxed engines and all-wheel-drive systems had earned respect in touring car and rally competition, and F1 seemed like the next logical step.
However, Subaru was not ready to build an F1 car or engine from scratch, to bridge that gap, the company partnered with the small Italian outfit Motori Moderni.
Led by the experienced Carlo Chiti, who had a long resume in racing and had worked on various projects for Ferrari and Alfa Romeo.
His proposal was daring and unconventional, a 3.5-liter flat-12 boxer engine, named the Subaru 1235.
The 1235; What’s next?
On paper, it seemed to fit Subaru’s identity perfectly, the boxer layout with its horizontally opposed pistons, promised a low center of gravity and smoother power delivery.
In theory, it would make the car more stable and predictable, but F1 had moved on from this kind of design years earlier.
By 1990, the best teams were running V10 or V8 engines that were lighter and smaller.
Still, wanted to go ahead, the company entered into a works partnership with the Coloni team, a small Italian constructor desperate for funding and tech support.
The team reworked its old C3 chassis to fit the 1235 engine, resulting in the Coloni C3B, a car that would go down as one of the least successful in F1 history.
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Testing days for Coloni-Subaru
From the very first test sessions, the problems were obvious, the engine produced about 550 HP, which was as much as 100 HP less than its rivals.
That alone would have made the car uncompetitive, but the situation was even worse, the engine was also massively overweight, around 250 pounds heavier than most others on the grid.
Extra weight destroyed the car’s balance, the rear of C3B was so heavy that the car became unpredictable in corners, understeering on entry and snapping into oversteer on exit.
The bulk of the engine also created packaging problems, its width restricted aero development and cooling became a constant issue. Mechanics complained that just accessing certain parts of the engine required hours of disassembly.
Drivers struggled on track and engineers had no time or resources to fix its fundamental flaws.
During testing days, they were slow, often several seconds off the pace of even the weakest competitors.
A project without direction
Their project was ambitius but did not go well, the company had entered F1 without the expertise that success required.
Motori Moderni’s small operation couldn’t match the development pace of giants like Honda or Ferrari, meanwhile, Coloni lacked the facilities to test and refine the car properly.
The partnership quickly became strained, Subaru’s engineers were frustrated with Coloni’s limited progress, while the team resented what it saw as unrealistic expectations from its Japanese backers.
Within a few months, the relationship had completely broken down.
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The end of the dream
The season began with quiet optimisim but in eight attempts, the Subaru-powered Coloni failed to pre-qualify for a single race.
The car never even reached the main qualifying sessions on Saturdays, let alone a GP start, by midseason, Subaru had seen enough.
The company withdrew from F1, ending its partnership with Coloni after just eight races, the team left no choice, switched to a Ford-Cosworth engine for the remainder of the year.
From F1 failure to rally dominance
Subaru in F1 was not a good stint but on the other hand it may have been the best thing that ever happened to its motorsport program.
After the failure, Subaru decided to refocus on what it knew best, rallying, just a few years later, Subaru’s World Rally Championship team became one of the most successful and recognizable in the world.
The blue and gold Imprezas driven by McRae, Richard Burns, and Petter Solberg went on to dominate the 1990s and early 2000s, winning multiple world titles.
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Subaru F1 ending story
Today, the Subaru-Coloni F1 effort remains a strange and fascinating footnote in motorsport history, it was a project built on pride and ambition, but undone by poor planning and outdated ideas.
Subaru’s F1 adventure lasted only a few months, but its lessons lasted far longer, from that wrong turn on the world’s fastest circuits came a redirection that led to decades of rally glory.
