(Wed 24 Feb 10)

For a company which only recently added a diesel engine to its line-up, Subaru is now showing signs of being much more adventurous about power sources.

That will be demonstrated at the Geneva Show, where Subaru will display its Hybrid Tourer Concept (pictured), first seen at the Tokyo Show last year. As well as a conventional two-litre turbo petrol engine, the gullwing-doored Hybrid Tourer also has two electric motors, a 10bhp one driving the front wheels and a 20bhp unit for the rear. The engine itself is of the boxer type, which basically means that it is built horizontally rather then vertically, giving the car a very low centre of gravity.

Subaru has put nothing but boxer engines in its cars for the best part of two decades (and broke new ground in developing a boxer diesel, which was why that project took so long) but no other manufacturer pays anything remotely like the same attention to that layout. It won't, therefore, come as a surprise to learn that the new concept car is the first hybrid ever to use a boxer engine.

The other new Subaru at Geneva can't be described as a boxer, because it has no engine at all. The Stella is an electric city car which can have its battery fully recharged from flat in five hours using a 240v power outlet, and it has a range of around 56 miles.

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