Out of Nakajima

Nakajima had been one of Japan’s great wartime aircraft makers, builder of the Ki-43 and Ki-84 fighters. The Allied occupation broke it up, and on 15 July 1953 five of the fragments, from Fuji Kogyo to Utsunomiya Sharyo, joined to form Fuji Heavy Industries. Aircraft manufacture had been legal again in Japan only since April 1952, and Fuji’s first product was a licence-built American trainer: 176 Beech T-34 Mentors.

Japan’s first jet

Fuji used the Mentor as a springboard. It stretched it into the four-seat LM-1 Nikko liaison aircraft and then the KM-2 and T-3 trainers. Its own T-1 Hatsutaka, first flown in January 1958, was Japan’s first jet trainer, first mass-produced jet and first swept-wing aircraft. Over 200 were planned, but the air force bought Lockheed T-33s instead and only 66 were completed. They served until March 2006. Fuji also built 275 FA-200 Aero Subaru four-seaters for private owners.

Trainers, helicopters and a new name

By the late 1980s 80 per cent of Fuji’s sales came from cars, but the aerospace division built helicopters for the Self-Defense Forces, target drones and the centre wings of the Boeing 777 and 787. The T-7 turboprop trainer won a JASDF competition in 1998, was thrown out when Fuji managers were arrested for bribing a politician, and won again in 2000. In April 2017 the company renamed itself after its best-known product: Subaru.

المصانع

• Utsunomiya · Utsunomiya, Tochigi — Utsunomiya Sharyo was one of the five founding companies

الأرقام القياسية والأولويات

• T-1: first post-war Japanese jet, first Japanese mass-produced jet and first Japanese swept-wing aircraft