Subaru Australia’s commitment to symmetrical all-wheel drive has killed off any prospect of a new rear-wheel drive sports coupe coming here.

As reported in Wheels’ April issue, on-sale today, the sports coupe is a joint project between Subaru and shareholder Toyota.

It will employ normally-aspirated 2.0-litre boxer engines, only power the rear wheels and be built by Subaru for both companies with different exterior sheetmetal. Subaru’s version is said to be based on its 2003 B11-S concept (pictured).

According to the scoop story compiled by Wheels’ Japan correspondent Peter Nunn, the car is tipped to start production in 2010 with pricing in Japan starting at a red-hot $A21,000.

But Subaru Australia managing director Nick Senior was quick to pour cold water on the car’s prospects in Australia: “From my understanding of it, it doesn’t fit within our brand strategy,” he said.

A key issue is the car’s rear-wheel drive. Since committing to a boxer engine and all-wheel drive model strategy 10 years ago, Subaru Australia’s sales have continually increased. In 2007 it sold a record 38,445 vehicles and was ninth biggest seller overall.

But that wasn’t Senior’s only reason to reject the coupe, also citing the failure of the Nissan 200SX and other coupes in the past.


“How many two-door coupes have been highly successful?” he asked.

“We have an iconic car which is Impreza WRX and WRX STI. They are four door, turbocharged vehicles which aren’t Johnny-come-latelies like so many of the competitors we see pop up from time to time.

“It is said ‘these are the new WRXes’ and lo and behold they disappear within a few years.”

The other local concern would undoubtedly be badge engineering. In the days when General Motors had a share of Subaru’s parent Fuji Heavy Industries, the Australians successfully fought off an attempt to rebadge the popular Forester compact SUV as a Holden and the Holden Commodore large car as a Subaru.

The Saab 9-4X – a rebodied and rebadged Impreza WRX - was also successfully resisted by Senior and his team.

“It gets back to the whole debate about badge engineering and we aren’t interested in that,” Senior confirmed.

“But more realistically and more credibly, our DNA is boxer engines and all-wheel drive. I haven’t seen that lose impetus in the last 10 years, so why should we stray from that strategy?”