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Subaru’s troubled people-mover to fade into history late this year.
Subaru has confirmed it will dump its controversial Tribeca, with the soft-roader-based people mover now likely to disappear from the Australian market as early as next year.
While Subaru has previously hinted at the Tribeca’s demise, Akihide Takeuchi, the car maker’s project manager for its product and portfilio planning division, confirmed to Drive this week that the Tribeca’s US production line would start to switch off in December, ending a troubled seven-year run for a vehicle that sparked one of the fastest facelifts in automotive history.
The Tribeca still sells in significant volumes in Australia - according to Subaru’s local chief executive, Nick Senior, it still accounts for 100 sales a month with very little advertising budget - but Takeuchi says capacity of the Tribeca’s US-based production line is needed for other models in the Subaru line-up.
Subaru’s Indiana-based factory has an annual capacity of about 200,000 cars, but the line is shared with rival Japanese car maker Toyota, which uses it to build its Camry mid-size car.
While Subaru plans to switch its US production priorities to building the Outback and Legacy (Liberty) models, Takeuchi says there is also growing pressure from Toyota to give more of the plant’s annual capacity to the Camry, which was the largest selling passenger car in the US last year.
However, Senior says he will be disappointed if the Tribeca is removed from the Australian market without a replacement being named.
‘‘Australia is the second-largest market for the Tribeca outside the US, and it’s a really important car for our line-up,’’ he says.
‘‘It’s a car that Subaru owners can grow up with, and it’s the only SUV-based people-mover that we have.’’
Senior says he had hoped to sell the Tribeca in Australia ‘‘for at least the next 18 months’’, and the shorter timeframe for the vehicle’s demise is ‘‘disappointing’’.
Subaru does have another people-mover in its line-up, the mid-sized, six-seat Liberty Exiga, but Senior says its smaller form is unable to fill the void left by the Tribeca’s departure.
The Tribeca launched in Australia in late 2006, and drew immediate criticism for its propeller-inspired face and lacklustre, thirsty 3.0-litre six-cylinder boxer engine that struggled with the people-mover’s 1900kg heft.
Just 12 months later, Subaru Australia made the call to introduce a facelifted version of the Tribeca featuring a less confronting facia and a larger 3.6-litre version of the six-cylinder engine.
The facelift also answered criticism of the lack of visibility from the optional third-row seats, and featured significantly larger rear-quarter windows.
The poor reaction to the original version of the Tribeca caused such a ripple within Subaru that it dramatically changed the way it surveyed would-be customers about its upcoming cars.
This info and more can be found at: http://theage.drive.com.au
