Market Insight: Subaru seeks traction in slippery market

SPARKLING interest for its 10th anniversary BRZ is a highlight of a rather dull year for Subaru as it – along with most of its peers – fought for supply in a market hampered by poor component availability and labour interruptions from COVID-19.

The brand’s sales to the end of September are down a modest 9.8 per cent in a combined passenger car and SUV market that is down 1.32 per cent.

Much of the fall is attributed to stock supply, but since 2021, it has been playing with six models instead of eight as it discontinued the Liberty and Levorg – the latter recently replaced and repositioned as the WRX Sportswagon.

In 2016, the Liberty and Levorg contributed 5116 sales, or 11 per cent, to the 47,018 units Subaru sold. Buyer interest appeared to dwindle toward the end of the decade, with the pair attracting only 1231 sales in 2020, or 3.9 per cent of that year’s healthy 31,501 sales for the Subaru brand.

Following a recent sales slide for the longstanding WRX performance halo as Subaru transitioned to a new-generation model, upon its arrival in May the new ‘Rex’ promptly outsold the annual sales of each year back to 2018.

The year-to-date September sales are now 1482 units with two variants, the sedan and a wagon (Sportswagon) that effectively takes over from the Levorg.

In the same month, Subaru Australia announced it was re-opening orders for the new BRZ coupe following a sell-out of the first allocation in October 2021.

Last month it said 150 examples of its 10th Anniversary BRZ would be offered to Australian enthusiasts and Subaru Australia has just reported that it sold all available cars in little more than a week.

Deliveries of this special edition – complete with WR Blue paint, blue cabin highlights and a numbered plaque – are expected to begin in February.

The new BRZ has recorded a 315.4 per cent sales increase in the nine months to September 30, with 810 sales. This comes after pent-up demand for the coupe, which had been on runout with poor availability during the previous year.

Subaru has also announced its first battery-electric vehicle (BEV), the Solterra, that is to be launched here next year. It was developed in partnership with Toyota and shares its platform and drivetrain with the Toyota bZ4X which was scheduled to be launched just before the Solterra but has since been delayed.

The Solterra is expected to be priced around $70,000, making it the most expensive Subaru of the current range and priced about $10,000 above its next most expensive model.

On the other side of the ledger, the cheapest Subaru is the XV which is the brand’s third-best seller with 9342 deliveries in 2021. It has been a consistent winner for Subaru and now is the fifth best-seller in its small SUV segment.

The bulk of the business still goes to the Forester that this year represents 29 per cent of the company’s sales. Its share was as high as 38 per cent in 2019 and has declined due to production delays caused by the shortage of semiconductors and the success of rivals including the less expensive MG HS, the new-generation Mitsubishi Outlander as well as new versions of the Kia Sportage and Hyundai Tucson.

Its Outback bigger sister is the fourth best-seller in the competitive large SUV category and its popularity is represented by the minor 0.9 per cent fall in sales in the first nine months of this year compared with the same period in 2021.

The Impreza is a strong seller for Subaru despite the small passenger car sector being almost abandoned by buyers who have rushed toward the SUV genre.

Subaru sold 2273 Imprezas – not including the WRX that scored an additional 1482 sales and is counted separately – in the period to the end of September, putting it fifth on the category ladder alongside the Volkswagen Golf.

Importantly, sales for the month of September were up 42 per cent on the same month in 2021, as stock became more freely available.