BRZ Sales Are Way Up Amid Subaru Sales Slide

Subaru at large faced a correction last month, but the sports car market didn’t get the memo

Subaru, among other automakers, has been enjoying month after month of record sales figures, in part thanks to the threat/eventuality of tariffs. While the brand remains up year over year, May 2025 saw Subaru move almost 6,000 fewer vehicles than in May 2024. It’s a mixed bag across models, but there were a handful of winners. Arguably, the most surprising performance is by the brand’s lone sports car offering, the Subaru BRZ.

Sporty offerings were the biggest winners and losers for Subaru’s May sales

Diving into the numbers, Subaru’s performance offerings are both a point of unexpected pride and a huge drag on the brand. The Subaru WRX tumbled 71.2 percent year-over-year, with the brand moving less than 500 examples off the lot last month. Year over year, the car is down 23.6 percent, the largest decline among the brand’s lineup. On a positive note, the Subaru BRZ saw tremendous growth. A 43.6 percent gain compared to May 2024 helped the BRZ enjoy a 24.6 percent gain year-over-year. It’s the second biggest gain for the brand, sitting aside the Solterra EV, another surprise, which saw a healthy 28.4 percent increase in volume year over year.

There’s a bit of a catch to that BRZ statistic, though. You see, Subaru only moved 227 BRZ coupes in May of 2024, so a 43.6 percent increase moves the needle to 326 units. That’s hardly the volume needed to save the brand, and remarkably still fewer overall units than the WRX. At the current pace, Subaru is on track to sell nearly exactly 3,000 units over the entire year. Assuming the car stays in play for 10 years, that’ll put BRZ production considerably under historically desirable and collectible models like the E46 BMW M3. Per year, BRZ sales are less than a quarter of what Porsche achieves with the 911.

It’s complicated across the rest of the Subaru lineup, with sales fluctuating wildly

The biggest drag on Subaru’s May sales was the Outback. The brand moved just 11,214 examples compared to 16,506 last year, a drop of 32.1 percent and over 5,000 units. The Ascent, too, suffered a 32.8 percent decline, with 3,547 SUVs finding their way into customer hands as opposed to 5,277 in May 2024. There were some winners in May, though. The Crosstrek and Legacy both saw double-digit gains over the previous May and remain up year-to-date, with the former increasing by 15.5 percent and the latter by 24.4 percent. In fact, only the WRX, Outback, and Ascent are down year-to-date, where Subaru stays 3 percent ahead year to date compared to last year.

Final thoughts

Other than rekindling my desire to own a BRZ — it’s rarer than a Porsche 911, you see — Subaru’s sales numbers for May only really paint a bleak picture for the WRX. We’re not sure what’s going on there, although there’s speculation that a new STI model may be on the way. Perhaps would-be buyers are waiting to see where that thread leads. Either way, the next time an automaker starts whinging that sports cars don’t sell, we have exactly one data point to rub in their face. Hopefully, they don’t look too far into it.