Monday brought an ever-increasing barrage of Facebook and Twitter posts on the importance of voting from your obnoxious friends and family, but it also brought us this interesting tidbit from Japan.
The TC 380, which sounds like the name of a Brazilian pocket pistol, is actually a Subaru — one you won’t be able to find in American dealerships, apparently, but one you could probably build yourself. (Read More…)
Just two Subaru models have graced these Rare Rides pages in times past. The first was a very beige Desert Fox edition of the midsize GL wagon, and the second was a clean example of the very first car Subaru ever offered in the United States: the tiny 360.
Today we combine the characteristics of both of these prior Rare Rides and take a look at an Eighties hatchback, one which represented the smallest North American offering of the time. It’ll Justy take a moment (ugh).
The defunct Scion brand isn’t done making headlines, it seems. The rear-drive FR-S 2+2 sport coupe is among a number of vehicles — mainly Subarus — recalled over valve springs that could break, leading to serious engine damage.
In total, some 400,000 vehicles built between 2012 and 2013 are included in the recall; among them, Subaru BRZs, Foresters, and Imprezas. The Japanese-market Toyota 86 and North American-market Scion FR-S, twins of the BRZ, feature the same 2.0-liter four-cylinder. (Read More…)
Operating in a higher price spectrum and with Subaru’s typically tight grip on the incentive account, there’s no telling what the new Ascent is doing for Subaru’s bottom line. But as Subaru conservatively predicted, the Ascent isn’t generating much in the way of greater sales activity inside Subaru showrooms.
Instead, the Ascent is growing Subaru’s volume by the leanest of margins, in part because it’s by no means a segment leader in sales; partly because nearly all of Subaru’s other models are suffering significant sales slowdowns.
Fortunately for Subaru, the Ascent is now selling at the approximate pace Subaru had forecasted. But it appears to be doing so at the expense of other Subarus. (Read More…)
Three hatchbacks from 2010 (we might call them crossovers today), all of them about to disappear for various reasons. All three promise utility for their owners, and all provide four driven wheels. Thinking with your 2010 hat, which one do you take home?
U.S. auto sales took a roughly 7 percent year-over-year dive in September, pulling the market’s year-to-date sales total further in the red. The industry-wide sales gain seen in the first half of the year is gone.
At Subaru, however, good timing and the continued popularity of a certain model kept the automaker from joining the ranks of its rivals (a group that does not include a beaming Fiat Chrysler). The automaker somehow managed to pull off a win in a dismal month, and it’s still up on a year-to-date basis, despite having so many minuses on its sales ledger. (Read More…)
They’ve got two doors, sporty intentions, and names people forgot long ago. Today we cover three oddball offerings from the latter part of the 1980s.
Will you take home the Nissan, the Mitsubishi, or the Subaru?
Outside of the addition of extra horsepower, it doesn’t seem like anything’s capable of turning the Subaru BRZ and its Toyota 86 twin into sales powerhouses. Even the power hypothesis is debatable.
Instead, the two rear-drive 2+2s soldier on into 2019 with minor equipment changes, plus the addition of an annoyingly-named Series.Gray variant for the BRZ. Like past special editions, there’s a strict limit on the number available. That’s not a problem, as there seems to be a strict limit on the number of BRZ or 86 models anyone’s willing to buy. (Read More…)
Living in Colorado (as I do) and spending a lot of time in junkyards (as I do), I see discarded Subarus. Lots of discarded Subarus, in fact, so many that I only notice the more interesting ones — say, an XT Turbo or a really ancient wagon out of a novelty song.
Today’s Junkyard Find isn’t particularly noteworthy by those standards, but it seems to embody so many Denver Subaru stereotypes that I decided to photograph it. High mileage, high final owner, and high levels of oxidation, all here at a mile-high junkyard. (Read More…)
A recall serious enough to necessitate the replacement of a car is rare, but Subaru should be glad it caught the problem before more faulty vehicles left the factory.
Over the course of eight days in July, 293 Ascents from the 2019 model year made it off the assembly line while potentially missing a full complement of welds — hardly something the automaker can just go back and touch up. (Read More…)
We’ve seen this kind of meteoric rise before, so it’s our duty to tell Subaru to “just say no” to drugs. Let’s not have this end in heartbreak for all the fans.
With that important announcement out of the way, it’s time to toss around some numbers — which, at Subaru of America, are quite positive. Despite an industry that sank over 3 percent overall, and with one less selling day than July 2017, last month was the brand’s best July in history, which followed its best June, and May, and… you get the picture. The first half of 2018 was Subaru’s best sales half to date.
Helping the brand achieve a 6.7 percent year-over-year sales increase was the arrival of Subaru’s largest vehicle to date. Go figure, Americans seem to like it. (Read More…)
Subaru is a once-tiny manufacturer that grew in leaps and bounds thanks to high demand from the United States. The automaker is the eighth best-selling brand in the region, despite being a scrappy upstart, and has managed multiply its volume many since the 1990s. But, like any business loaded into a cannon with the word “success” emblazoned on the side, it can’t continue streaming through the clouds indefinitely without encountering some turbulence.
Subaru may be in for troubled times. (Read More…)
The Rare Rides series has dabbled in AMC previously, cataloging some of the fun ideas generated by the good people of Kenosha, Wisconsin. We’ve featured the luxury targa Concord Sundancer, the unrealized Van, a baroque Matador Barcelona, and the Renault-by-AMC Alliance GTA. But none of those represents the AMC brand quite as well as today’s Rare Ride. It’s a pre-CUV crossover. A luxurious Subaru Outback, before there was such a thing.
It’s of course an Eagle 4×4 wagon, looking Limited in black over tan.
To think of the Subaru brand is to think of the misty Pacific Northwest, the shimmering peaks of the Rockies, or the pastoral farms and rolling hills of New England. This is Subaru Country — where farmer’s markets and mountain biking awaits.
Well, Subaru head office wants to put an end to regional popularity, rolling out a five-year plan that targets the American South in a bid to boost North American sales by 20 percent. (Read More…)
After Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal came under public scrutiny, numerous industry analysts prophesied it would not be an isolated incident. Cheating had been done in the past, and would likely continue into the future. In fact, numerous experts claimed every major automotive manufacturer probably engaged in illicit behavior to some degree. With so many laws and employees who may be interested in shirking them, it’s bound to happen time and time again.
On Monday, Nissan Motor Co. admitted it improperly measured exhaust emissions and fuel economy for 19 vehicle models sold in Japan. Late last year, Nissan and Subaru both confessed that they had allowed uncertified technicians to conduct finial vehicle inspections. Initially, the issue seemed like a harmless oversight, but in some cases the failing went unnoticed for decades, resulting in falsified data as a way to cut corners. Both Mitsubishi Motors and Suzuki admitted in 2016 that they exaggerated the fuel economy of their vehicles by cheating on tests. (Read More…)
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