The online-only sale of the Subaru BRZ coupe – claimed to be the first of its type in the world – is off to a stalled start.
Sales were due to open at midday today but an overwhelming number of visitors to the Subaru website placing orders or making enquiries has crashed the system.
“The sheer volume of traffic to our internet site is four times higher than normal,” says Subaru Australia spokesman David Rowley.
“We’ve had a massive spike, and it’s preventing the ‘buy’ button from appearing. We hope to have it resolved in the next half hour,” Rowley told Drive at 1pm eastern time.
UPDATE: When Drive tried at 1.15pm eastern time we found a "BRZ BUY" button in the bottom right-hand corner of the home page but couldn't progress past the first stage (nominating a post code).
Subaru only has 201 BRZ coupes to sell for the remainder of this year. Rowley said the maker had taken eight deposits in the first five minutes and sold 18 cars in a little more than an hour. Six of those buyers were women.
At the weekend it announced a drive-away price of $37,150, which included free servicing for three years.
Subaru is directing customers to its website so it can then allocate the car to the nearest dealer for delivery, rather than have dealers (an customers) squabbling over so few cars.
The Subaru’s twin, the Toyota 86 coupe, is sold out to October for a $29,990 model, and to November for a $35,490 model.
This info and more can be found at: http://smh.drive.com.au
right off.
