DETROIT – One of the most ascendant brands in the U.S. the past seven years, Subaru is targeting just a 5% increase in U.S. sales this year to 540,000, as it awaits the completion of two capacity expansions at its Lafayette, IN, plant.
However, the wait to boost Lafayette capacity to 400,000 units by 2016 didn’t slow Subaru down in 2014.
Despite claims last year of being maxed out at the plant, Subaru still managed to squeeze a record 286,498 vehicles out of Lafayette, up 7.6% from 2013’s 266,166, WardsAuto data shows.
The record U.S. production spurred record U.S. volume of 513,693 sales, up 21.0% from 2013.
“(Parent company Fuji Heavy) has been great at getting us what we need,” Subaru of America President Tom Doll says in an interview here of the automaker’s U.S. and Japanese manufacturing plants cranking up production to meet demand.
But he concedes what Subaru needed in 2014 U.S. inventory, and what it got, still didn’t match.
Doll says the brand probably left sales of certain models on the table, judging by tight days’ supply figures.
“(The Outback has) the lowest days’ supply. We only have an 8 days’ supply, so essentially it’s sold out,” he says of the midsize CUV that was redesigned for ’15 and grew sales 17.6% to 138,790 units in 2014.
WardsAuto estimated a slightly healthier days’ supply of 23 for the Outback on Dec. 31, although that’s still well below the industry-average 57 days’ supply for U.S. light trucks at the close of last month.
Doll says Subaru also could have sold more units of the new-for-’15 WRX, as well. Deliveries of the performance sedan and its sportier sibling, the WRX STI, hit a record 22,158 in 2014.
Because of insufficient capacity, Fuji Heavy had to make tough decisions on allocation, which led to falling sales of the Impreza compact, for instance.
“We shifted the production to (the small) Crosstrek and to (the midsize) Forester (CUVs),” Doll says. “Don’t look at the ‘down.’ We could have sold more Imprezas,” he adds, noting dealers are clamoring for the car.
Impreza sales fell 20.2% in 2014, while XV Crosstrek and Forester volume jumped 32.0% and 29.4%, respectively.
The 2.5-year-old XV Crosstrek racked up 70,956 deliveries, making it Subaru’s third best-selling model in the U.S. last year.
The Forester strengthened its lead as the No.1-selling Subaru, with 159,953 2014 deliveries, outpacing the No.2 Outback by 20,000 units, up from a 5,000-unit gap in 2013.
The Impreza, XV Crosstrek and Forester are assembled in Japan. Subaru plans to build the Impreza in Lafayette in 2016. A next-generation model is expected in the fourth quarter of that year.
Subaru also will assemble a replacement for the Tribeca 3-row CUV in Lafayette. Such a model is the only gap Doll sees in the brand’s U.S. lineup, noting a subcompact still doesn’t make sense for the U.S. due to lack of demand in the segment and now low gas prices.
Other than the Impreza, the BRZ also fell for Subaru last year. But Doll isn’t alarmed by its 12.6% drop-off, noting it’s a natural trajectory for a sports car.
A Subaru spokesman says a next-generation BRZ is intended, although it’s not clear how it will play out if Toyota walks away from the project. There have been some disagreements between the two automakers on derivatives of their joint cars, including convertible and turbocharged versions.
The BRZ was co-developed by Fuji and Toyota, spurring also the Toyota 86 and Scion FR-S models.
