If you see a Subaru 360 in the U.S., it’s probably a car that was imported here when they were new. The 360 and its bigger cousins, the Sambar truck and van, are some of the few Japanese “Kei” cars ever sold new in the U.S., but by the time they got here, the 360 had been around for a decade in Japan. This is one of those rarer JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) versions, and it’s a recent import to the U.S.

The 360 was not Subaru’s first car (though it wasn’t far off), but it was the car that put the brand into the Japanese, and later American, consciousness. Americans associate the 360 with the late 1960s as that’s when it was imported here, but it was designed a decade earlier, and its evolution is similar to many of the European microcars of the late 1950s. In hindsight, that’s not so surprising, given that these cars were designed under similar constraints.

Birth of the Kei Car

The 360’s reason for being, as the name implies, was the Kei class. It was not the first Kei, but it would end up being the very first truly popular one and, consequently, the first really common mass-market car that ordinary Japanese could afford. In some ways. it fulfilled the goal Japan’s politicians had in mind when the class was established in 1949. That aim was to move people from scooters and bikes into cars, which in turn would stimulate both industrial production and more consumer demand for cars.

These were good ideas, but the original formula they came up with was not really workable. As originally intended, Kei cars could have just 150 cc of displacement for four-stroke cars and 100cc if they used two-strokes. It was not until 1955, when the displacement limit was set to 360 ccs that a practical Kei came along, the Suzulight SS, the forerunner of Suzuki’s Fronte and Carry Keis. But that car, based on a German Lloyd, only barely conformed to the idea and wasn’t a big seller.

Meanwhile, Fuji Heavy Industries was keen to get in on the ground floor of manufacturing cars in Japan. FHI was an amalgam of several companies that had once been part of Nakajima Aircraft, which was broken up after the end of WW2. Before the breakup, the company had started building scooters, namely the Fuji Rabbit, which actually pre-dated the famous Piaggio Vespa.

There were many scooters for sale in Japan, and the Rabbit became one of the most popular of them. As in Europe, however, many customers wished they could afford a car instead, particularly on rainy or cold days, but Fuji’s first car idea was a midsize sedan that used a Peugeot engine after their original partner, Prince Motor, dissuaded Fuji from using any pieces that might compete with Prince’s own cars. The Subaru 1500 was not destined for mass production, though, as Fuji saw it could not compete with Prince, Nissan, or Toyota’s economies of scale.

Before They Were Stars

Subaru, the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster, was chosen by CEO Kenji Kita. The company went back to the drawing board pretty quickly for another Subaru.

Interestingly, many former aircraft, motorcycle, appliance, and even farm equipment manufacturers in Europe had similar experiences, turning to scooters after the war and experimenting with cars. They were further along than Fuji, already having begun building cars like the Isetta and Messerschmitt as early as 1953 and the Goggomobil from 1955.

Designed in 1956 and 1957, the Subaru 360 was created by a team led by former aircraft engineer Shinroku Momose. An aeronautical engineer by training, he went to work at Nakajima fresh out of school in 1942 and returned after military service in 1944 to help engineer aircraft. The end of the war put aircraft out of reach, and after that, he designed other types of machines, including buses, truck chassis, and the Subaru 1500.

Just like Ernst Heinkel and Willy Messerschmitt, in the fifties, he turned his attention to a microcar, the 360. It was created to conform to the Kei laws and to answer the Japanese Ministry of Trade’s call for a “national car,” though only Toyota’s Publica really came close to being such a vehicle.

The formula was somewhat similar to many of the European microcars but appreciably more sophisticated than the Isetta, Heinkel, or Messerschmitt. It bore more of a resemblance to Dante Giacosa’s Fiat Nuova 500, but it was even smaller. On such a diminutive vehicle no space was wasted, we’ll post a photo in the comments showing off the brake drums, which are integrated into the wheels.

Subaru 360

A lightweight monocoque with a fiberglass top panel to help lower the center of gravity, the little Subaru 360 weighed just over 900 lbs. in its initial form. It was tiny, as Kei regs demanded, just 117” (2.97M) long and 51” (1.29M) wide, using a 356-cc two-stroke twin for power. This was a good combination within the confines of the Kei formula at that time, and the car debuted on March 3, 1958, just as microcar mania was starting to cool in Europe.

It was an instant hit and, unlike the 1500, Subaru had made plans for mass production at the Fuji factory at Isesaki. A small station wagon, shades of the Fiat 500 Giardiniera, soon followed, joined much later by a rollback-top convertible made easy to produce by dint of the fiberglass top. In 1960, Momose followed up the 360 with the even more clever Sambar van and pickup, which re-used many of the 360’s mechanical pieces.

The 360 was not fast or glamorous, but it was plenty cute, and it could seat four people and commute in traffic in Japan’s crowded cities, where speed limits were usually 25 mph and speeding was rare. It was a good upgrade from a scooter and over 11 years, nearly 400,000 of the little cars would be made. Serious competition like the Mazda Carol and Suzuki Fronte did not emerge until the early 1960s. Mazda’s R360, introduced in 1960, did not have as much room.

The 360 came stateside almost a decade after it debuted, thanks to Fuji Rabbit importer and future exotic car star Malcolm Bricklin. When it arrived, it was small and light enough to skirt the new federal regulations that had knocked cars like the 2CV and Mini off of U.S. import lists after 1967, but it was also too small and slow for many Americans, who by then only had dim memories of the small number of Lloyds, Isettas, and Heinkels they’d bought in the late fifties. In the U.S., the Subaru 360 helped establish the company’s beachhead here, but it didn’t last long.

This recent import sports custom pedals and other nice details, and at a time when most JDM imports are cars like Skyline GT-Rs, it’s nice to see a very original little Kei like this.