Subaru Australia snares extra 200 BRZs

SUBARU Australia has good news for long-suffering BRZ customers awaiting delivery of their two-door coupes – an extra 200 vehicles are being rushed to Australia over the next two months.

Instead of the usual 30-35 cars a month, Subaru dealers will get about 130 BRZs a month in February and March, shortening the wait by several months for many buyers.

The extra allocation comes courtesy of a drop in demand in Japan for the base model of the BRZ's Toyota twin, the 86, freeing up supply from the Japanese Subaru factory that builds both models for the world.

Subaru Australia managing director Nick Senior said the waiting time for BRZs had been out to September, but the extra cars would cut that to July.

He said all the cars in the extra deliveries were spoken for under Subaru's build-to-order system for BRZ, with customers ordering their vehicles online.

Subaru hopes to deliver up to 550 BRZs this year – small numbers in Subaru's annual sales of about 40,000 vehicles.

Subaru Australia managing director Nick Senior.Mr Senior had bad news for buyers hanging off for a hotter version of the BRZ or perhaps a convertible – he says no such vehicles are in the production schedule.

“I keep hearing about a turbo version or a supercharged version or a convertible, but I haven't heard anything about them in our forward plans,” he said.

Mr Senior said the BRZ had been a great branding exercise for Subaru, bringing younger buyers to the Subaru and, through awards such as Wheels' Car of the Year, extra publicity.

He said BRZ buyers differed from WRX and STi buyers in that they were more likely to be single and younger.

An anticipated rush by older ‘empty nesters’ looking for a weekend toy had been smaller than anticipated, with young buyers dominating.

Mr Senior said he had also been surprised by the order bank for manual gearbox cars, running at about 65 per cent of sales instead of the 50/50 split with automatics that had been anticipated.

The BRZ-86 was developed jointly by Subaru and Toyota, using a Subaru platform and naturally aspirated boxer engine with Toyota dual fuel-injection and six speed transmissions.

Under their model-sharing deal, Toyota gets 12 86s to every one Subaru BRZ – a ratio based on their respective global sales.