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A funky family wagon and a new coupe are shining lights to buoy Subaru Australia in 2012 after enduring a sales disaster this year.
Its managing director, Nick Senior, says the effects of Japan's tsumani in March crippled production of its mainstay Impreza range, pushing back the launch of its important successor model by four months.
"The sales figures are ugly," he says. "Impreza makes up 45-50 per cent of sales and that relates to about 1400 a month. We're now doing less than 1000."
The effect will slash Subaru Australia's predicted 42,000 total sales this year to around 34,000, Senior says. It recorded about 40,000 in 2010.
"The disaster has affected two months of production and probably another month of backlog," he says. "We expected the new Impreza on the market this week. It'll now be March.
"But the good news - and there is some good news - is that Australia will be the first market in the world - even beating the home market of Japan for the first time ever - to get a new Subaru model.
"I think the XV will become an important volume model and will go a longway to recoup the sales shortfall we're experiencing now." The XV - set to launch here on January 1 - is a cross-over wagon based on the Impreza.
Senior says there may be some cannibalisation of Forester sales but sees them attracting different buyers.
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