Subaru vs Toyota

Born out of a spirit of invention and innovation, Subaru and Toyota are two Japanese-founded auto manufacturers with a long lineup of vehicles that have gained popularity among Parsippany, Wayne, and Morristown area drivers.

While both brands are built on the foundation of accessibility, comfort, and utility for the everyday driver, the two offer very different styles and features.

Our team at Paul Miller Subaru wanted to take a look at where these two brands diverge to help drivers like you decide which is more in line with your needs. You can find what we learned here.

Subaru vs Toyota: A History

Subaru began as a manufacturer of bodywork for buses and aircrafts in Japan. This staked its claim as an expert in transportation. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, it began its work to build a passenger car offering comfort, stability, and affordability to the everyday driver.

By the late 1980s, Subaru created the Subaru Legacy, a model that's still thriving today. In 1989, it broke the 100,000-Km world speed record, and continued to break records over the next couple of decades.

With the invention of the Impreza in 1992, the Forester in 1997, and the Subaru Outback in 1998, Subaru established itself as a manufacturer of vehicles built with intelligence and sensitivity.

Toyota also grew out of a desire to provide the everyday person a means of reliable, comfortable, and affordable transportation.

Founder, Kiichiro Toyoda, was an inventor and innovator from a young age. He officially founded Toyota Motor Corporation in 1937, after producing its first passenger vehicle in 1936. This was during a time after the Great Kanto Earthquake devastated the Honshu railway system, leaving people to turn to the vehicle for transportation.

Of course, this is where Subaru and Toyota began, but let's take a look at where they are now.

Subaru vs Toyota: Powertrain

Both Subaru and Toyota are known for their highly innovative and efficient powertrains. Both carefully balance power with efficiency by matching high-performance engines with a transmission that maximizes fuel economy.

In many cases, the two manufacturers place a continuously variable transmission (CVT) under the hood. This does away with the limits of set gears and shift points. Instead, it allows for nearly infinite shifts between the upper and lower limits to keep your drive as optimized as possible.

If you're dealing with some tricky handling, however, you may feel more confident in a Subaru model. Subaru equips all its vehicles with its Subaru Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive (AWD) system, even the compact sedans and hatchbacks.

While Toyota makes AWD available on its many SUVs, it doesn't offer this kind of advanced handling for its sedans or hatchbacks. So, if you prefer a car over an SUV, commuting to work in the winter may be easier for you in a Subaru vehicle than a Toyota vehicle.

Safety Systems: Subaru and Toyota

Subaru and Toyota are both path-pavers when it comes to safety technology. In fact, they both offer smart safety suites that are designed to enhance driver awareness and attention while you're out on the road. Features you can find from both manufacturers include:

• Smart cruise control
• Automatic emergency braking
• Forward collision warning
• Automatic high beams
• Lane keeping and lane departure alerts

Subaru and Toyota also have a blind-spot monitoring system that provides a warning when another vehicle enters your side blind spot. The Subaru system takes this a step further with its Lane Change Assist feature.

This tells you if the traffic in your intended lane is approaching too quickly to allow for safe lane changes or merging. Toyota doesn't offer a comparable feature, so you may not be as sure when changing lanes as you could be in a Subaru vehicle.

Will You Drive a Subaru or Toyota?

While both Subaru and Toyota are reputable brands with so much to offer drivers around Parsippany, Wayne, and Morristown, our team at Paul Miller Subaru found that Subaru brings a bit more with it.

If you want to give a Subaru a try, let us know and we'll get you out for a test drive.

Contact us to schedule your test drive today!