Bishton did acknowledge, however, that Subaru’s retail presence is predominantly in the north of the UK: “We’ve definitely got opportunities where we don’t have good representation today. The south-east is a good example.”
Bishton said the arrival of Subaru’s new EVs, plus a new generation Forester later this year, will kick-start a “period of growth” after many years of modest sales volumes. Subaru sold only about 2400 cars here last year, but it’s huge in the US, with 600,000 sales there in the same period being around 75% of its global total.
Subaru forecasts its global sales to nudge one million in 2024 and made heavy year on-year gains of around 30% in the UK from January to June.
However, Bishton said constrained supply over the next few months will make that growth curve tail off. Ultimately, though, she plans to boost Subaru’s UK share. At its peak in the 1990s, it was selling 12,000 cars a year.
While its UK volume today is small, it is vastly improved on the 951 units it sold in pandemic-blighted 2020, which represented a 68% year-on-year decrease, the heaviest of any car brand that year.
At the time, then MD John Hurtig called the performance “a disaster”, adding that Subaru needed to “rebuild the dealer network from the roots” and distance itself from the image of the old Impreza WRX STi, absent from the UK market for several years and unrelated to today’s range.
