Subaru Sales So Strong Dealers Run Out of Cars

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Subaru Sales So Strong Dealers Run Out of Cars

© courtesy of Subaru of America

Subaru is an unlikely company to have the hottest selling cars in America. It does by far. Perhaps some of it is the extremely positive reviews from car research studies.

Based on a study from Kelley Blue Book, two Subaru models have very short days to turn, which is the time from when a dealer receives a car until it is sold. One of its cars, the Outback, had the shortest days to turn of any vehicle sold in America. In an article “Cars So Hot They’re Out of Stock,” 24/7 Wall St. editors offered an analysis:

Outback
> Make: Subaru
> Avg. days to turn: 16.0
> 2014-2015 sales change: +9.7%
> Starting MSRP: $24,995

Subaru is one of the hottest car brands in the country, breaking its annual U.S. sales record in 2015 for the eighth consecutive year. Sales of the brand’s Outback model, which is second only to the Forrester as the most popular Subaru, increased by 22.7% through the first three months of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015.

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Also on the list:

Legacy
> Make: Subaru
> Avg. days to turn: 24.0
> 2014-2015 sales change: +15.6%
> Starting MSRP: $21,745

Brand new models and redesigns tend to be appealing to car buyers. While the Legacy brand has been around for more than two decades, Subaru introduced a fully redesigned generation of the mid-sized sedan in 2015. Sales of the Legacy jumped 15.6% compared to 2014, and the average model spent just 24 days on the lot before being sold.

In the recent Consumer Reports study, “Which Car Brands Makes the Best Vehicles,” Subaru ranked second only to Audi out of 30 brands. All of its models were recommended by the research firm.

Methodology: To determine America’s fastest-selling cars, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed days to turn figures provided by Kelley Blue Book’s vehicle research and valuation site. This figure measures the average number of days a particular model spent on dealers’ lots following its arrival until it was sold in 2015. Additionally, Kelley Blue Book provided figures on U.S. sales by model for 2013, 2014 and 2015. We also reviewed monthly sales releases published by auto manufacturers. Manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) figures come from the manufacturers’ websites.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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