2011 Subaru Forester X Touring Wagon 4-door 2.5l on 2040-cars

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Subaru mulling expanding Indiana plant for Forester, Impreza

Thanks to currency fluctuations and their impact on the bottom line, a growing number of Japanese automakers are starting to increase vehicle production in the US, and it appears Subaru could be the next to do so. According to Bloomberg, Subaru is looking into expanding production capacity at its Lafayette, Indiana assembly plant, which currently builds the Outback, Legacy and Tribeca as well as the Toyota Camry.
Subaru's Indiana plant currently has an annual maximum capacity of 310,000 units, but the automaker is expecting to far exceed that figure this year, with year-to-date sales of 299,788 units through November (not including Camry) - an increase of almost 30 percent over 2011. The report indicates that Subaru could expand the plant to add as many 50,000 additional units to the plant, likely in the form of either the Forester or Impreza.

Junkyard Gem: 1996 Subaru SVX LSi

Even as Subaru nailed down its position as the world's top maker of sensible all-wheel-drive cars, the company was willing to take a chance with a big, expensive sporty car with science-fiction looks. That car was the SVX, built for the 1992 through 1996 model years. Here's a final-model-year SVX, spotted in a Denver-area self-service wrecking yard. Because I live in Colorado, where just about everyone— myself included— owns at least one Subaru, discarded SVXs aren't so rare in my local wrecking yards. Before today's car, I have photographed this '92, this '93, this '95, and this '96. Unlike their XT and XT6 predecessors, the SVX had no manual transmission option; its big 3.3-liter boxer six engine made too much power for the three-pedal hardware Subaru had on hand. Those four-speed automatics were quite failure-prone, but this car's career was cut short by an ordinary wreck and not a bad slushbox. Subaru didn't make another engine this big until more than a decade later, with the 3.6 in the Tribeca. In 1996, this naturally-aspirated H6 was rated at 230 horsepower. Front-wheel-drive SVXs were available for a few years in the United States, but all of the '96s had all-wheel-drive. With all the horror stories about the transmission failures in these cars, 151,311 miles counts as an impressive mileage figure on an SVX. This car's owner or owners took good care of it. Well-cared-for older cars in wrecking yards often have the original owner's manual inside. Sometimes they even have the original window sticker stashed in the glovebox. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. The Alcyone SVX (as it was known in its Japanese homeland) featured this dreamlike TV commercial featuring a cover of Hedy West's 500 Miles. Featured Gallery Junked 1996 Subaru SVX View 19 Photos Auto News Subaru Coupe Luxury Performance Classics subaru svx

Subaru posts 15.7% rise in fill-year operating profit

TOKYO — Subaru on Monday posted a 15.7% rise in annual operating profit in the fiscal year that ended in March as it recovered from a raft of product recalls last year, but warned that sales of its cars would take a hit from the coronavirus outbreak. Profit rose to 210.3 billion yen ($1.96 billion) for the year just ended, from 181.7 billion yen a year earlier under international financial reporting standards. It exceeded a consensus estimate of 204.7 billion yen profit drawn from 17 analysts polled by Refinitiv. Global automakers are struggling to recover from the coronavirus, which has pummeled car sales as shelter-in-place orders in many countries clobbered car demand, while plant workers had been left unable to commute to work. Though Subaru and its rivals have begun to restart vehicle factories, anaemic demand, supply chain disruption and social distancing measures at factories are expected to limit output in the coming months. "We saw a limited impact of the coronavirus on our results for the year just ended," Chief Executive Tomomi Nakamura told a teleconference. "But although we have resumed production this month, we are only operating one shift in Japan, and the pace of U.S. output has slowed significantly ... we see many uncertainties related to the virus." As a result, the maker of the Outback and Forester SUV crossovers declined to give an earnings forecast for the current business year, while it slashed its year-end dividend for the year just ended by 61% to 28 yen per share. Some analysts believe industry-wide global auto sales could slump by a third this year and that any recovery will be slow and patchy as job losses and reduced incomes weigh on consumer spending. Subaru, which earns two-thirds of its vehicle sales from the United States, acknowledged that it may take a hit in the coming months as its biggest market struggles get the coronavirus pandemic under control. The automaker saw a 3% rise in global vehicle sales in the year to March to 1.03 million units, bouncing back from last year, when a defective steering component and measures to improve inspection tests had stopped output for two weeks at its sole assembly plant in Japan. The process to restart its U.S. plants would take time, Subaru said, and it expects to produce only around 5,000 units this month, a fraction of last year's 40,000. The virus would result in a global production hit of around 150,000 units, it added.