The chip shortage is hitting almost every sector of the automotive industry hard. Manufacturers planned for a pullback in demand during the pandemic. And instead, they received a glut of demand from many people having disposable income. Subaru has been one of the hardest-hit manufacturers. And if you’re looking to score a new Outback Wilderness or Forester Wilderness, you could be waiting a while.
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Automotive News reports that Subaru has a backlog of 45,000 vehicle orders to fill, which represents around a month’s worth of sales. And that backlog is growing by about 10,000 vehicles every month. Subaru typically strives for 45 days worth of inventory on dealer lots. Currently, they are operating with around five days worth of inventory. The lack of inventory appears to be why Subaru is looking at a second year of sales declines after an 11-year run of record sales.
Out of curiosity, I looked up the inventory at my closest Subaru dealer in the northern Detroit suburbs. The dealer has 42 vehicles listed. But only one of them — a well-equipped Subaru Outback Wilderness oddly enough — appears to be on the lot as of this writing. The other 41 have “this vehicle is in transit” tags on them.
According to Automotive News, Subaru does expect the chip situation to improve in 2022, and they hope they can move back up to a 30-day supply of vehicles. They expect yearly sales to bounce back to around 650,000 units from fewer than 600,000 this year, with some exciting new cars on the way. But with everyone in the automotive world fighting for the same chip supply, there may be hiccups along the way.