One of the least-loved Subarus is about to find out what happens when you lose a popularity contest in the auto industry.

Remember Subaru’s Advanced Tourer concept from the 2011 Tokyo Auto Show? If not that’s probably because it was widely thought to be a window on the upcoming Legacy. Instead, it seems we were looking at the new WRX.

Thanks to data from automotive research firm Polk, we were able to compile a list of the top 10 most popular automakers for buyers aged 18 to 34 – roughly the Gen Y set.

That update will occur in Japan, we might add, but these days with increasing pressure on automakers to reduce fuel consumption and emissions output, plus an increasing need to standardize powertrains and features around the globe, there’s probably a chance we’ll see similar changes to our Legacy and Outback down the road.

The Subaru rallycross team is gearing up for a new season of racing, and is drumming up excitement by releasing this video of the three WRX STI entry cars having some some fun out on the track. 

The next generation Subaru WRX may bring about a new, ground-breaking electric turbo when it finally sees production at the end of 2013.

In the wake of yesterday’s industry-standard sales number inundation, there is a story that seems to have been overlooked in the hubbub: Subaru‘s 2012 Impreza saving the company’s sales numbers.

If you’ve been holding your breath for a Scion FR-S turbo announcement, it’s best to exhale now. The Japanese automaker has confirmed that the FR-S won’t see a turbocharged variant from the factory, at least for the time being.

This really isn’t a huge surprise, but we all kept our fingers crossed hoping that Scion would eventually come out with a turbocharged model to pump even more performance into an already great sports car. Currently the FR-S is powered by a 2.0-liter with 200 hp and 151 lb-ft of torque, and with a price tag of $24,930 with a manual transmission, it’s a great bang for the buck.

Subaru BRZ sales have already skyrocketed in Japan, and in America we can expect the same result, but the sales beg the question: is the BRZ really that good?

Well Subaru thinks so, and to back up its new RWD sports car the company has released a two part mini-movie detailing all of the design and engineer work that was brought together during development. Everything from chassis design to engine placement and even steering wheel shape is explained in the movie, leaving nothing to the imagination.

News is surfacing that extremely high demand is somehow causing Japanese domestic deliveries of the Subaru BRZ to be delayed until January, 2013. 

It isn’t totally clear how something being well received and in-demand would make it harder to deliver, if anything the opposite would make sense, but according to FT86Club that’s exactly what’s going on.

We know you’re itching to get your hands on a new Subaru BRZ. Subaru does too, and today you can get your fill of BRZ-heaven by configuring your sports-coupe online.

Subaru just released a series of “Dynamic Brochure” iPad apps for the 2012 Subaru Impreza, Impreza WRX/STi, Outback, Legacy and Forester.

Supply and demand dictate price, if you don’t like it go buy a Civic. Maybe that’s a little harsh, but it’s true and one Subaru dealership is making that abundantly clear.

It said in an email that there would be a non-negotiable $5,000 markup on all of the 20 BRZs that would be delivered to its lot. The email also said several of the cars were already spoken for.

That might seem hard to swallow, especially considering the new Subie coupe only has 200 horsepower, but given the critical acclaim both it and the Scion FR-S counterpart have already received you might have quite a car on your hands. That could be true for more than one reason too.

While the Toyota GT86 and Scion FR-S has received a lot of attention from aftermarket outfits during the past couple months, things have been rather quiet from the Subaru BRZ end… until now.

Heading to Auto China in Beijing next month will be the 2013 Subaru Legacy which the Japanese automaker has announced will sport “extensive modifications” compared to the typical yearly model updates.

Known for its rugged terrain-capable cars sporting efficient four-cylinder engines, Subaru built its reputation on offering all-wheel drive and crossover-like ground clearance in an efficient package.

The 2013 Subaru BRZ will be hitting dealerships this spring, and will carry a base price of $25,495. 

Back when Ken Block still worked with Subaru, he built an outrageous WRX STi for the 2009 SEMA Show with a TRAX system. Clearly it inspired some enthusiasts to do the same, albeit three years later.

The 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX you’re feasting your eyes on isn’t the same body style that Block used, but the effect is all the same. American Track Truck, Inc. equipped the WRX with a Dominator Track System so it could perform on the snow, slush, ice, mud, swamp, marsh… you get the point. While Subaru has been synonymous with rally racing over the years, this might just be a tad over the top.

With the Subaru BRZ due to arrive in showrooms very soon, Subaru is out promoting its new sports coupe in full force. One way to get your car noticed is by taking it racing, and that is exactly what Subaru did on April 1, 2012.

The BRZ race car made its public racing debut at the season opener Super GT, GT300KM race held in Okayama, Japan. This grueling race features some of the most established sports car brands such as the Chevrolet Corvette and the Lamborghini Gallardo. So the BRZ was going to have a tough time competing with the big boys, but was still able to qualify 8th on the grid.

The BRZ actually stayed in 8th place for most of the race, but when the car came in for a driver change, it soon after developed a problem and had to be retired. Upon further investigation, the problem turned out to be a faulty rear differential.

The main driver for the BRZ GT300 is Tetsuya Yamano, who wasn’t completely happy with the set-up of the car, and is insistent that the team is working on it and it will get better in races to come.

We wish the Subaru team much success in future races and hopefully will see this exciting new sports coupe in the winners circle very soon.

Watch the video’s below of the BRZ on the track.

Discuss this story at Subaru BRZ Forum.

Ahead of the 2012 New York Auto Show next week, Subaru has released details on its Outback and Legacy, which are both getting a serious makeover for 2013.

The Subaru BRZ went on sale in Japan on February 3 and was expected by the company to sell around 450 units a month. Now, almost two months later, Subaru’s parent company Fuji heavy industries has released that 3,551 BRZ’s have sold, eclipsing estimates.

Subaru teased the world with the BRZ STI concept at the LA Auto Show last year, and it now appears as though the automaker will live up to expectations, delivering a high-performance version of its new sports car.

Bringing another crossover vehicle into its family, Subaru announced today that it will debut the 2013 XV Crosstrek at the upcoming New York Auto Show.

Excited for the new Subaru BRZ and Scion FR-S? We already know how the FR-S performs – read our review here – but up until now, we hadn’t a real clue what its fuel economy would be like.

Those in the market for the all-new Subaru BRZ and Scion FR-S ( Toyota GT 86) will be excited to hear that Yasuyuki Yoshinaga, president of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., has announced the production of the new jointly-produced sports car will hit 100,000 a year.

North American tuner companies were invited to  Toyota Headquarters in Torrance, California to measure the new Scion FR-S and take a closer look at the car to begin the process of drafting future tuning parts. Many tuners were present at the event and the response to Scion’s new sports car has been overwhelmingly positive across the board.

Earlier, we had reason to celebrate as production for the Subaru BRZ and Toyota GT86 had finally kicked off in Japan. The highly anticipated sports coupe will make its way to America as the Scion FR-S to hot anticipation.

But just in case we’ve all forgotten how great the Toyota GT86/Scion FR-S is, the Japanese automaker released a series of videos featuring Toyota design chief “Dezi” Nagaya at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show talking about the GT86’s design story. The four part series is accompanied with a video featuring Tetsuya Tada, Toyota chief engineer who is the main man behind the acclaimed GT86.

The videos offer insight to the inspirational design of the GT86, including how it pays tribute to the classic Toyota 2000GT. Nagaya also talks about the exterior and interior design, and even goes so far as to tell how the “86” logo came to usher in the new-generation sports car.

For more Scion FR-S news and info, visit  FR-Sforum.com and to discuss the Subaru BRZ, visit  SubaruBRZforum.com

Watch the five videos on the Toyota GT86 / Scion FR-S after the break.

Today at the Gunma factory in Ota-city Japan, a ceremony was held to celebrate the start of production for both the Subaru BRZ and Toyota GT86.

Subaru announced its new, low-cost suite of safety systems called “EyeSight” today that the company says will be one of the most affordable instances of this technology on the U.S. market. 

Subaru is issuing a recall for 275,000 Foresters today, built between November 26, 2007 and March 13,2012.

The full owners manual for the new Subaru BRZ hit the web today courtesy of self proclaimed “performance dealership”, Subaru of Keene in New Hampshire.

If you think about it, limiting availability of one of the most highly anticipated cars of the 2013 model year is a pretty savvy move, after all it can only serve to keep demand high right?

Subaru replaced Honda as the top-rated automaker by Consumer Reports today, in a bit of an upset.

Consumer Reports released its Top Picks for 2012, with Toyota claiming five of the 10 spots — the first time since 2003 that a company held so many.

Consumer Reports chooses the “best all-around models” in each category by conducting road tests, reading thousands of customer surveys about reliability and examining crash test ratings on each model.

Toyota is the only company on the list with a repeat appearance, its winners ranging from best family sedan to best family hauler.

See the complete list of winners below: (note: all cars listed are the 2012 model)

Have you ever asked yourself: “Hmm, I wonder what a limo made just for soccer moms would look like?” The wondering is over – cast your eyes on the 2007 Subaru B9 Tribeca Limousine.

You never forget your first car, it’s special. Now  Subaru wants you to share your story. As part of its 2012 Subaru Impreza campaign, the automaker has launched FirstCarStory.com, a cool site that lets you tell the story of your first car with animation.

Back in December we saw the Subaru BRZ GT300 in a promotional video showing off what it’ll look like on the track, and now we have some legitimate (as in, non-promotional) footage of the race car getting some shakedown test runs out at Fuji Speedway in Japan.

NHTSA issued out a recall for 2012 Subaru Legacy and Outback vehicles due to an issue with the side curtain airbags. According to the report, an incorrect propellant mixture for the initiator component was used that can result in an insufficient output of compressed gas.

Let’s go ahead and call the Subaru BRZ the fraternal twin to the Toyota GT 86… or is it a triplet to the Scion FR-S?

Subaru announced the continuation of their contingency program, the Subaru Rally Sport Program, for the 2012 Rally America National Championship. The Subaru Rally Sport Program, which is managed by Subaru of America with Vermont SportsCar as a partner, will continue to be North America’s most lucrative contingency program for rally racing.

Subaru has announced that Andrew Aquilante and Bret Spaude will return as factory team drivers for their entry in the Grand Sport (GS) class of the 2012 Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge. The first round of the series will take place at Daytona International Speedway on January 27th, 2012.

Die-hard Subaru fans have been at pains to embrace the company’s push into the mainstream. Every successive generation blends in more with its surroundings: the Forester could be mistaken for a half-dozen other Asian cute-utes, the Legacy dropped its wagon model and grew to Accord-aping size, and the Impreza became an amorphous blob with driving dynamics to match.

Subaru recently launched the limited edition WRX STI S206 Challenge Package model in Japan, a higher performance version of the already impressive STI. It’s existence, however, is directly related to this car, the S206 racer.

First unveiled at the LA Auto Show late last year the Subaru BRZ STI Concept is no longer just a hint at things to come. Just a month ago at the Tokyo Motor Show, the Japanese automaker officially drew back the covers on the production BRZ (while Toyota did the same with its GT 86).

Living up to its name, Subaru tuning company and race team Prova has unveiled its “Black Edition” BRZ sports car at the Tokyo Auto Salon. The wild tuner-car-meets-race-car gets matte black ground effects with orange pinstriping, matched out back by a significantly-sized matte-painted spoiler.

Although the concept version of Subaru‘s rear-drive BRZ, displayed at the 2011 LA Auto Show back in November, looked close to production ready, we’ve now seen the real thing, which made it’s North American Debut this week at the Detroit Auto Show.

Subaru will use next week’s Detroit Auto Show to stage the first North American showing of its new BRZ sports car.

The Subaru Impreza gets a full redesign for 2012 in the hopes that it can move beyond the mediocrity of the last generation. The last Impreza easily blended in with other compacts, and its attempts to soften Subaru’s image angered plenty of its long-time fans. The sedan especially lost its character in the redesign, and although performance was broadly similar, Subaru fans were vocal in their displeasure.

Out of all the current 2012 vehicles available, which would you think are the most suitable when it comes to winter driving?

2012 is starting to look like the year of the new hachi roku as both Toyota and Subaru ready for an onslaught of marketing events for their joint sports car. For the upcoming Tokyo Auto Solon, held from Juanuary 13 to 15th, two special Subaru BRZ’s will be on display.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s awards can make or break a car’s future, something Subaru and Volvo know quite well.

In a display of continuing safety advancements in automobiles, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reported that more vehicles have earned the “top safety pick” this year after manufacturers have strengthened the roofs of their vehicles to improve its rollover safety.

The Scion FR-S might be the most exciting sports car in years and it might also be the most important project Toyota has ever launched, helping change perceptions about an automaker that has become known for building appliances. But the back-to-basics enthusiast sports car almost never happened, according to Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada, speaking at the car’s launch last week in Japan.

The concept for the car, originally the brain child of then Toyota VP Akio Toyoda (the man currently at the helm of the world’s largest automaker), was initially rejected by Subaru, which eventually went on to donate the engine to the project and even handle the lion’s share of the sports car’s development, resulting in both the Scion FR-S (also known as the Toyota GT 86 in Europe or just the 86 in Japan) and Subaru BRZ.

Shortly after Toyoda took the helm, Tada san was assigned to a planning division set up for the project. After studying what everyone else was doing, (seeing the use of turbochargers, all-wheel drive and high grip tires), Toyota decided to move in the opposite direction, instead opting to build a sports car that harkens back to the roots of machines like the AE86 – from which the GT86 gets its name. It occurred to Tada san that an ideal powerplant would be a boxer engine, due to its low center of gravity. Toyota had an historical precedent for the use of a boxer engine in the Sports 800, built from 1965 to 1969. Toyota also just so happened to have access to such engines through a recent purchase of shares in Subaru parent company Fuji Heavy Industries, and a shared project could help foster relations between the two rival automakers.

A proposal was penned, for a rear-drive, boxer powered sports car and presented to Subaru, which immediately axed it. Subaru executives had two major concerns says Tada san, the first being that a rear-drive machine doesn’t fit with Subaru’s all-wheel drive brand message. The second reservation, and one that speaks to Toyota’s newfound attitude of taking ownership of its beige-to-drive past, is the admission that Subaru didn’t think Toyota could build a sports car. And while harsh, it’s not entirely surprising, after all, the last sporty Toyota was a Celica GTS in 2006 and the last rear-drive Toyota car to roll off an assembly line (at least for US consumption) was in 2005.

The project was then suspended for six months but eventually the team involved at Toyota helped convince the powers that be at Subaru. Exactly how that happened remains a mystery, although one possible conclusion can be drawn from a graph Toyota revealed to AutoGuide and a group of journalists gathered to drive the car at Sodegaura Forest Raceway, just outside Tokyo. On it is a breakdown of who handled what in bringing the GT86/BRZ to market. In the end, teams at Toyota were responsible for planning and design while manufacturing and development were handed over to Subaru. The concept may have been Toyota’s, but Subaru, a company with plenty of recent and current enthusiast-targeted models, was tasked with ensuring the FR-S/BRZ was a fun-to-drive, dynamic handling machine. Toyota representatives steered clear of confirming as much, but it would seem a compromise was struck, with Subaru bending on the rear-drive architecture. In exchange, Toyota handed over development of its sports car to Subaru.

As a result, the first prototype was built back in 2008, and was what one Toyota exec referred to as “proof of concept”, prompting both automakers for forge ahead with development and design, leading first to the FT86 concept at the Tokyo Motor Show in November of 2009, through numerous concept cars, all the way to the official reveal at the same show two years later, our recent gushing test-drive, and a planned on-sale date of this Spring.

Discuss this story at FR-SForum and read out review of the Scion FR-S here.

Subaru has confirmed that their next generation WRX will pack a new 2.0L turbocharged flat-four powerplant with a targeted horsepower rating of 270-hp. The powerplant will be a turbocharged version of the FA20 powerplant found in the new Subaru BRZ.

Sources from Subaru of America revealed of a turbo in development for the Subaru BRZ’s 2.0-liter flat-four FA20 engine.

The Tokyo Motor Show has come and gone and won’t be back for another two years. If you missed out on all the excitement (and wacky concept cars) then watch AutoGuide’s video wrapup, with ten short spots highlighting all the most exciting new models. If you’re after more in-depth coverage, then see our Tokyo Motor Show page her e and see all of our videos at the AutoGuide YouTube page here.

Watch more videos from the Tokyo Motor Show below:

We’ve been going crazy over Toyota‘s GT 86 (or rather, Scion‘s FR-S) and Subaru‘s BRZ, but there’s no denying that Subaru’s BRZ GT300 racer is the coolest of the bunch right now. While it was awesome to get to see the machine at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show, seeing it in action and on the track is, well, just something else.

Subaru announced today that they’re stopping sales and issuing out a recall on 2012 models of the Impreza, Legacy and Outback due to complaints about increased brake pedal travel. Around 3,000 cars will be recalled with notices being sent to vehicle owners within the next couple of days. A stop-sale was also put into affect on November 25th with Subaru making it a priority to fix the 3,000 recalled vehicles and those still in inventory.

AutoGuide was on hand last night for the live reveal of the 2013 Scion FR-S in Los Angeles, where Scion showed off their version of the Toyobaru rear-drive, boxer-powered sports car.

The FR-S is mechanically identical to the Subaru BRZ and Toyota 86, save for a few minor aesthetic changes. Scion was mum about pricing unfortunately, and that seems to be the last question hanging over everyone’s head.

Check out the video below for the live reveal.