Subaru's Lesbian Ad Campaign

Queer as Fact

History

4.8 • 666 Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2026

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today's episode is a nice light-hearted look at something near and dear to many sapphic hearts - Subaru! We take a look at WHY lesbians loving Subarus is such a stereotype, what the car company did to encourage this, and laugh at some pretty saucy innuendos. This episode was originally released on our Patreon in 2024. Check out our website, where you can find our sources, as well as everything there is to know about Queer as Fact. If you enjoy our content, consider supporting us on Patreon, checking out our merch, and following us on Instagram, Tumblr and Bluesky. [Image: A black and white Subaru ad featuring the caption "Loves Camping, dogs and long-term commitment. Too bad it's only a car"]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, and welcome to Queer as Fact, the podcast bringing you queer history from around the world
0:04.1	and throughout time. I'm Jasmine. I'm Irene. I'm Alice. And today we're discussing Alice's
0:09.3	car and how gay it is. Before we get started, I'd like to acknowledge the Bunurong-Bunwong people of the Kulin Nation
0:26.6	as the traditional owners of the land on which we record this podcast and pay respect to their
0:30.6	elders past and present. We recognize them as the custodians of an oral history tradition far older
0:35.5	than this podcast. Uh, We do not have any content
0:38.1	warnings for this episode, so enjoy. So, what are we actually discussing today? My car. Alice's
0:43.8	car? What more is there to say? Alice's car is a lesbian. Alice, can you tell the listeners
0:50.5	what car you drive? A Subaru Forrester? What year is it from?
0:54.8	2003?
0:58.4	I just thought they should know it wasn't old enough to vote in the US.
1:03.9	Well, 2003 is actually great because it's also old enough to be involved in this ad campaign.
1:05.1	Oh my God, amazing.
1:12.2	So, you may or may not be aware of some late 90s, early 2000, Subaru ad campaigns that were targeted towards lesbians.
1:13.9	And today I'm going to explain how that happened and what it looked like.
1:17.6	More funny than it being old enough to vote in the US is that it is old enough to have
1:21.2	a full driver's license in Victoria.
1:23.9	It's a self-driving car.
1:26.4	Sorry, carry on.
1:28.2	These ads were launched in 1996, but the story starts a little bit before that with a lot of careful development, months of negotiations with the head office.
1:36.3	And even before that, with an initial response to falling sales in the US, Subaru was not having a good time in the early 90s.
1:45.3	They had a pretty good product, but not like a crazy good product.
	...

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