Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Malcolm Bricklin is an American businessman who’s had an unorthodox career spans more than six decades with numerous prominent failures and successes, mostly related to manufacturing or importing automobiles to the United States, especially Subaru.
In the mid-1960s, Bricklin went to Japan to meet with Fuji Heavy Industries to arrange for importation of their scooters to the USA. While there, he happened to see the Subaru 360, which got up to 60 miles to a gallon of gas and because it weighed under 1,000 pounds did not require federalizing. So he signed an exclusive contract to import Subaru cars into the USA and, in the process, formed Subaru of America.
The first Subarus to enter the US were the 1968-1969: Subaru 360 and less than six months after the company formed, it went public becoming the only import car company that was publicly traded.
How I made this shot: The original image of a Subaru concept car at the Tokyo Motor Show was made with a Canon Digital Rebel that was set in Auto White Balance mode. The lens used was the EF-S 18-55mm kit lens with an exposure of 1/60 sec at f/4 and ISO 400.This car was originally photographed as a horizontal image that was then cropped into a square using the Photoshop’s Crop tool. Next, the the top part of the image file was extended using the Edit>Content Aware Scale command. That stretched the image,—mostly just the background— to which the Motion Blur (Filter > Blur > Motion Blur) effect applied. I then selectively erased part of that layer before cropping into the vertical image that you see here.
The Subaru 360’s name was derived came from its tax limited (in Japan) engine displacement of 356 cc. It had light weight monocoque construction, swing axle rear suspension, fiberglass roof panel, and rear-hinged (aka suicide) doors. It was, in short a classic Kei car. I was nicknamed the “ladybug” in Japan because that’s what it, sort of, looked like! The 360 was available in two-door, station wagon, convertible, actually a coupe with roll-back fabric roof like the Fiat 500. As the Fuji Heavy Industries’s first automobile, production reached 392,000 over a 12-year model run. 10,000 of them were sold in the United States, where Bricklin advertised them as “Cheap and Ugly.”
Bricklin later founded General Vehicles to manufacture the Bricklin SV-1 (1974-1976), imported and marketed Fiat’s X1/9 and Spider convertibles (1982), imported and marketed the Zastava Koral hatchback from Yugoslavia under the Yugo nameplate (1985−1992.)
While Bricklin lives in Monroe, New York at the height of his success he owned a 5,000-acre home in the Colorado Rockies with an indoor shooting range, a riverfront swimming pool, helipad, and pet camel.
PS. And Mary and I have our own history with Subaru (in Colorado.) You can see our first Subie, a brand new 1982 GL wagon in white that we both loved. That was followed by a silver 1985 GL wagon that was one of the most undependable cars we ever owned, so there’s no photos of it! Her current Subaru was a used low-mileage 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, that is basically transportation but Mary likes it.