Motori Moderni
After seeing fellow Japanese manufacturers Yamaha and Honda enter Formula One as engine suppliers, Subaru decided to follow suit in 1989. They contracted the Italian firm Motori Moderni to build the engine for them; Motori Moderni had previously built a turbocharged V6 engine during the turbo era in the mid 1980s. This engine had been primarily used by the Minardi team from 1985 to 1987, although AGS briefly used it in 1986, but never saw any real success. For Subaru, Motori Moderni came up with a 3.5-litre, 60-valve flat-twelve engine in the boxer configuration that the Japanese firm's road cars utilised. Although the flat-twelve design had proven successful for Ferrari in the mid-to-late-1970s in their multiple championship-winning 312T series of cars, it had fallen out of favour from 1980 onwards due to the advent of the ground effects cars, which the wide flat engine configuration did not suit.