2016 Subaru Liberty
Taken in isolation the year 2015 is one where it’s easy to ponder that Subaru Australia was the mouse that roared. The facts are Subaru has been growling for 16 years out of the past 18 years – that’s how many years it has increased volume sales. The two years it failed to exceed the previous year were due to factors outside their control namely the GFC and the Japanese tsunami.
In 2015 Subaru models Outback SUV and Liberty sedan roared up the sales charts after all-new models were released in January. With sales of 10,927 Outback boasted a 344 per cent increase. Liberty found the mark with 4097 sales – up 293 per cent over the previous year in about the toughest segment going – large cars, that includes local favourites Commodore and Falcon.
While the Australian car market grew by 3.8 per cent in 2015, Subaru grew by double that amount at 7.6 per cent. Worldwide in 2015 Subaru sold more cars than it could produce, building 978,000 vehicles and this year is hoping to crack the million-mark.
Subaru is a smallish division of the large Japanese corporation, Fuji Heavy Industries, and does battle mainly with Japanese heavyweight competitors such as Toyota, Nissan, Mazda and Mitsubishi.
However Subaru differs from the rest by offering all-wheel-drive vehicles across the range – apart from the BRZ sports car – and in the past couple of years has led the way with safety technology that complements the AWD safety and torque vectoring systems in use in many models. However, it’s the EyeSight that is starting to drive Subaru sales. It’s a driver assist technology that greatly reduces the chance of having a nose to tail collision – one of the most common road crashes.
2016 Subaru Outback
Subaru has just launched upgrades to three key models: Outback, Liberty and Forester.
When the new model Outback was released in January last year Subaru was unable to offer EyeSight on diesel models. This upgrade sees that rectified in all automatic versions and will be a stimulus for further growth in Outback sales with the diesel variants attracting rural buyers.
EyeSight uses cameras to detect potential collisions – and now detects and reads brake lights on cars in front – and if you don’t look like braking, EyeSight will intervene and do it for you. And, if you don’t brake hard enough, it will again intervene and use the hard braking via brake assist.
At the launch of the updated models Subaru Australia managing director, Nick Senior said statistics were starting to emerge that revealed the real value of EyeSight. He said an Adelaide fleet operator with 565 vehicles, including 125 Subarus, of which 51 are fitted with EyeSight, recorded 358 incidents with damage since January 1, 2014. Of those 113 involved from end impacts to the bumper, crashes and wildlife strikes. Only one involved a Subaru with EyeSight and that occurred when the vehicle turned a corner and collided with a car that would have not been picked up by EyeSight.
In addition to EyeSight Outback also gained Vision Assist technology on three top of the line models with the technology including blind spot monitoring, lane change assist, auto dimming rear view mirror, high beam assist and rear cross traffic alert that detects passing vehicles when reversing.
Subaru also added the Vision Assist package to premium variants of the Liberty range, Liberty 2.5i and 3.6R. All Liberty models now also have Emergency Stop Signal (ESS), where under urgent braking the hazard light flash to warn following vehicles. Engineers also tweaked the shock absorbers on Liberty to reduce noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) and reduce impact harshness on sharp bumps.
2016 Subaru Forester
The popular Forester gained a suspension upgrade to improve stability and NVH. It is also wearing a fresh front end with a new bumper (Excluding 2.0XT) grille, headlights plus new fog light surrounds to premium variants.
There was no change to Forester pricing which starts from $29,990 while Liberty premium models 2.5i Premium and Liberty 3.6R have increased by $500 to $35,990 and $42,490 respectively while the entry level remains at $29,990.
Outback pricing increases between $500 and $1500 with the entry level Outback 2.5i CVT unchanged at $35,990 and six premium models starting at $41,990 topped off by the Outback 3.6R at $48,490.
