BRZ online sellout success
After only three hours, the Subaru BRZ sports coupe has been sold out, and 2013 stock is being snapped up tooSubaru's controversial online-only sales strategy for the BRZ sports coupe has been a sell out success.
The entire year's allocation of 201 cars was sold out in around three hours yesterday afternoon despite website problems at Subaru.com.au. And Subaru has continued to take orders for the joint-venture two-door with some customers unlikely to take delivery until February or March in 2013.
Subaru has confirmed that 290 BRZ cars have been purchased via the online system thus far, which means on top of the 201 cars available this year (50 of which are dealer demo cars), some 141 cars from 2013 stock have now been accounted for.
This flies in the face of Subaru's suggestion that it would unwind the online sales channel once 2012 stock was accounted for.
Priced at $37,150, the BRZ has made Subaru almost $9 million in less than 24 hours, and was offered with driveway pricing that includes three years free servicing.
"People are still placing orders," said Subaru's National Corporate Affairs Manager, David Rowley.
"It's been massive, the level of interest."
The amount of activity was so extreme that after the online BRZ website went live at just before 1:00pm yesterday, it crashed several times as the online traffic peaked at more than 50 times the arverage, and overloaded Subaru's servers.
Motoring.com.au attempted to go through the process at around 2:00pm on Monday July 16, and the website spat out a 505 error, and wouldn't load.
However Mr Rowley says that "Feedback has been very positive," when asked about how the online sales system fared.
He explained that the level of interest was well above what Subaru had anticipated.
"There are some learnings here - having available capacity on the site is one of them," added Mr Rowley, who said usability was "good" now.
After selling out all 2012's cars in three hours, the orders are continuing with another 140 already spoken for in January 2013, when the new stock arrives, and Subaru is confident the online system will keep the sales ticking over.
Mr Rowley stated "We would love to get more cars" but added that prospective customers appreciated the online system's honesty.
"It's transparent in terms of how long people will wait for cars."
Clearly, people are happy to wait for the BRZ.
Read our launch review of the Subaru BRZ
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