Subaru BRZ sold out in three hours
BY RON HAMMERTON | 16th Jul 2012
Buyers still in the queue for one of the highly prized boxer engine 2+2 coupes will now have to wait until 2013 for delivery.
The first 50 new BRZs were snapped up in the first 90 minutes after online sales opened for business at 12.45pm, with the remainder going by 3.47pm.
However, the rush of potential buyers – and curious rubber-neckers – brought the site to its knees, seemingly making the process a lottery.
By the time the last car was sold, Melbourne-based GoAuto was still unable to get past the first of five steps in the online buying process, to choose a dealer.
The system would not recognise postcodes and display a list of nearby dealers, as promised, bringing a variety of error messages.
If we tried the Sydney postcode (2000), it sometimes would display a list of dealers, but would not take the next step of selecting the dealer, to go to the “add accessories” stage.
Subaru told GoAuto that its website had been impacted by a rush of visitors, at least four times the usual traffic.
Although the unique buying system was scheduled to have gone live at midday, it fired up at 12.45pm.
The first customer is said to have started the process at 12.50pm, and completed it in less than 20 minutes, at 1.09pm.
Within 90 minutes, the sales tally had topped 50.
Subaru Australia has been allocated just 201 BRZs this year. Of those, about 60 are committed to selected dealerships as demonstrators, while at least 28 were pre-sold to early-bird buyers who placed deposits with dealers for the car, sight unseen.
Buyers are being asked to place a deposit of $3000, either by PayPal or credit card, with the remainder due when the vehicle arrives.
The online system is restricted to BRZ sales, and will be reviewed at the end of the year.
