The Subaru BRZ sells out in Australia - in about three hours

A key point is that Subaru designated only 201 examples of the BRZ production for the Australian market but regardless of the number of vehicles sold – the fact that it took less than half of a business day to completely sell out shows the level of enthusiasm around the new rear wheel drive sports car.

The sales portion of the Subaru BRZ website was expected to go live in July 16th around noon in Australia (AEST) but the massive influx of traffic was so hard on the company servers that the site was severely bogged down for some time. Once that issue was handled, the Subaru BRZ officially went on sale in Australia around 12:45pm AEST. In the first five minutes after the page went live, there were eight soon-to-be BRZ owners going through the process of building their new Subaru sports car and filling out the required electronic paperwork. The first official online customer order was fully completed within 20 minutes with the prospective customer building their dream Subaru BRZ, completing the purchase contract and paying their required deposit in under a half an hour. A total of 50 Subaru BRZ sports coupes were sold in the first hour and a half with the other 151 being sold over the next few hours. By 3:47 local time, the entire stock of BRZs headed for Australia had been purchased under contract with a deposit ranging between $3,000 and $5,000 US Dollars.

The 2013 Subaru BRZ in Australia carries an MSRP of $37,150 in Aussie funds (about $38,045 USD) so it isn’t quite the budget racer down under that it is in the US and other parts of the world. These initial 201 units will be delivered sometime over the next few months. Subaru is still accepting orders from hopefully Australian buyers but those who didn’t purchase one of the first 201 BRZ sports coupes headed to the Aussie market will have to wait until early 2013 – if not later.

The Subaru BRZ (along with the Toyota GT86 and the Scion FRS) are proving to be a big hit in every available market around the world. This is a good thing for those three automotive brands but it may prove to be a bad thing for those hoping to get their hands on one of these lightweight, rear wheel drive sports cars in the immediate future. All of these vehicles are being built on the same Subaru production line so as the car has gone sale in major markets around the world in multiple forms, there is a defined production constraint that will prevent some markets from being able to acquire the supply to meet all of the demand.

The good news is that with the success of the Subaru BRZ, Toyota GT86 and the Scion FRS, we are likely to see these models in the applicable brand lineups for years to come.

Source: Joel Strickland’s Blog