Subaru News: Subaru Still Sees Traditional Cars As Important

[William Maley]

Ford's announcement of dropping most of their lineup of traditional cars likely caused a number of automakers to consider doing something similar. One automaker that will not be doing this is Subaru.

Dominick Infante, Subaru’s national manager of product communications told Motor Trend one of the key reasons they keeping traditional cars is increasing gas prices.

“Gas prices are starting to come up now. So a good hedge for better economy is having a sedan,” said Infante.

“So we still make the Impreza and the Impreza hatchback. They do get better gas mileage than say a comparable CUV like the Crosstrek so we do sell those so if the market does change that’ll help sales of sedans.”

Subaru's entry-level Impreza helps bring first-buyers in and performance models like the WRX/STI and BRZ draw in customers in their late 20s and early 30s.

Still, Subaru's car lineup is taking it on the chin. Here are the sales numbers through April,

Impreza: 22,287 (Down 16.3% YTD)
Legacy: 14,730 (Down 13.9% YTD)
WRX/STI: 9,854 (Down 8.2% YTD)
BRZ: 1,286 (Down 10.1% YTD)

Their crossover lineup is doing slightly better. Again, here are the sales numbers through April,

Crosstrek: 45,728 (Up 66.6% YTD)
Outback: 58,205 (Up 2% YTD)
Forester: 50,783 (Down 9.7% YTD)

Source: Motor Trend

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[riviera74]

AWD is NOT fuel efficient at all compared to FWD.  Since Subaru has an all-AWD lineup, they will need a cheaper FWD sedan or two sooner rather than later.

[smk4565]

The 3 box sedan will never die, and gas prices are rising, SUV prices are rising, at some point the economy will take a downturn and people won't be looking at $40k mid-size crossovers for transportation when they can get a mid-size sedan for $30k.   I think people do like AWD though, Subaru is smart to make that standard. if they keep these cars fresh they will get sales when Ford leaves the market.

[daves87rs]

Common sense speaking....trends come and go-but never bet everything on the short sale...

 

Sedans will still be around in 10 years....you can bet on it......

2 hours ago, smk4565 said:

The 3 box sedan will never die, and gas prices are rising, SUV prices are rising, at some point the economy will take a downturn and people won't be looking at $40k mid-size crossovers for transportation when they can get a mid-size sedan for $30k.   I think people do like AWD though, Subaru is smart to make that standard. if they keep these cars fresh they will get sales when Ford leaves the market.

Everyone will be making money on Ford and FCA.....

[Miles Wenzel]

Isn't the Crosstrek an Impreza? That sort of skews the SUV numbers. Kudos to Subaru for not jumping on the short term profit train.

[Robert Hall]

11 minutes ago, Miles Wenzel said:

Isn't the Crosstrek an Impreza? That sort of skews the SUV numbers. Kudos to Subaru for not jumping on the short term profit train.

Yeah, just an Impreza hatchback w/ crossover appearance..