Ben Lockwood, PhDThe SUVification of the Subaru Outback is my villain origin story
Slyence
Joe Brockmeier@Slyence @benlockwood are they, though? Cause I’m a customer and they’ve lost me with the behemoth they’re calling an Outback now.
Sara@jzb @Slyence @benlockwood yeah, our household owns two Subarus and we're all pretty grossed out by this
@sarae @jzb @benlockwood I get it, I want a real wagon and I’m not happy my choice is now an expensive Benz or Audi, but the new outback is flying off dealer lots
@Slyence @sarae @benlockwood Oh, well if they can fly, then that changes my opinion somewhat. Do I need a different license for that?
@Slyence @jzb @benlockwood I'd be curious to see the numbers on sales, since I'm not seeing them on the roads here and I live in the Subaru capital of the universe
@sarae @jzb @benlockwood the current model has 38 days supply in dealer lots, compared to ~90 for the last model year
Supply and inventory are both down, so the demand is high
With the return of physical hvac controls and a Toyota infotainment system I think this thing will be a sales winner no matter how ugly it is
@Slyence @sarae @benlockwood Hmmm. Are we sure that their sales are up? https://www.carscoops.com/2026/04/subaru-outback-sales-decline/
@jzb @sarae @benlockwood in car sales the only metric that matters is days of inventory on the lot, down is good, up is bad
38 is really good, that’s almost to the point of dealer markups
Outback sales have a lot of storytelling around them, they moved production from Indiana to Japan which caused a huge availability hit
the other metric to watch is financing rates which tells us the forester hybrid is super hot vs the rest of Subarus lineup