Subaru’s Sales Took A Beating But This Unlikely Hero Emerged
BRZ deliveries in the US jumped almost 44 percent but Subaru was still way down overall
June 4, 2025 at 12:33
- Subaru’s U.S. sales plunged 10.4 percent in May with nearly every model down.
- WRX sales dropped over 70 percent, marking its worst month in recent memory.
- The BRZ posted a surprise 44 percent gain, but volumes were still tiny overall.
May proved a tough month for Subaru, even as buyers scrambled to make purchases ahead of looming US tariff-related price hikes, which only made the slump sting more for the Japanese brand. While Subaru was talking up its new Solterra after its debut at April’s NYIAS, the old one was proving a hard sell in dealerships, and so were several other models. The brand’s sales dropped more then 10 percent, but one unlikely hero tried valiantly to reverse the slide.
Subaru’s US arm sold 52,292 cars last month, down from 58,356 in May of 2024. That’s a hefty drop and even a superhuman effort by the BRZ coupe could do nothing to stop it. BRZ sales jumped 44 percent, an incredible result for a car that’s turned in some terrible numbers in recent times. But even that performance only took sales to 326 units, which is a drop in the ocean when you’re talking about a 6,000+ unit decline.
Related: Is This Subaru’s Next WRX Or Something Even More Extreme?
The outgoing Legacy was also up, by 17 percent to 1,793, Crosstrek sales pushed north 14 percent to 15,793 and there were incremental gains for the Impreza and Forester. But unfortunately for Subaru that good work was undone by several other models that simply didn’t pull their weight over the last four and a bit weeks.
Ascent sales slid by 33 percent to 3,547 units, the Outback was down 32 percent to 11,214 and the Solterra dropped 19 percent to 1,246. But the biggest loser by far was the WRX, a car that was once lusted over by many American car enthusiasts. Only 482 people took one of those home in May, down from 1,673 a year earlier.
SUBARU US SALES
The Solterra and Outback can at least claim to have been affected by the impending arrival of newer versions – the Solterra is actually up 24 percent year to date and the Outback only down 3 percent. But the WRX has no such excuse, though it might argue that its YTD negative 24 percent result is less horrific than May’s 70 percent plummet, if still awful.
But it looks like Subaru might not be ready to give up on the WRX. The company released a teaser this week that appears to be for a WRX-related concept due to be unveiled at this October’s Japan Mobility Show. The presence of a big splitter, wide fenders and vented hood have led to speculation Subaru might be about to resurrect the WRX STI.
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