The September Bloomberg reports show that Subaru is still putting the U.S. sales pace of every other manufacturer to shame, and the company has been for quite awhile now — years, actually.
Subaru sales saw a 28-percent increase from last September, with Americans buying a record 53,070 cars from the Japanese company. The U.S. numbers are a fraction of more established companies like Toyota and Honda, which saw 162,595 and 119,046 vehicles sold in that same month, respectively.
But where Subaru stands out is in its rate of sales, which Bloomberg attributes to its SUV-oriented vehicle lineup (which U.S. drivers have a real liking for), the small company’s push from the northeast and northwest into the southern regions of the U.S. and its overall company approach:
This summer, Doll told me Subaru started excelling when it stopped acting like a car company. A few years ago, it started crafting ads around kids and dogs and kayaks, rather than cash-back discounts. And it gave its dealers more support and crafted philanthropic programs to pump money into their communities. Subaru became a lifestyle choice, not a car company.
Subaru reflects that approach with its lifestyle commercials like this one, featuring newlyweds and centered around the idea of love (and we’re guessing that Subaru executives are loving the rates that their sales are increasing). While Subaru’s numbers aren’t increasing at quite the rate they were a couple of years ago — for example, a 45-percent increase from August 2012 to that same month in 2013 — the numbers are still climbing at rates much higher than the competitors.
Whether Subaru will eventually reach the numbers of its larger competing manufacturers is yet to be seen, but the company is on the right path for now.
Photo credit: AP Photo/Matt Rourke
Contact the author at alanis.king@jalopnik.com.