Exchange rate kills UK Subaru Impreza diesel

Date: 08 January 2009   |   Author: Tristan Young

A weakening of the Pound against the Yen has seen Subaru shelve plans to bring the Impreza diesel to the UK.

The car that was expected to have been the saviour of Subaru's UK sales was launched in Euro markets at the end of last year priced from 21,500 Euros or £19,400 at current exchange rates - significantly more than rival lower-medium hatchbacks.

"We have no plans at the moment to bring the car into the UK. There's no launch date at present because of the pricing issue with the Yen exchange rate," said a UK Subaru spokesman.

In the UK Subaru is distributed by importer IM Group which restructured last year including several redundancies following a significant fall in sales last year as well as exchange rate problems.

In mid-2008 a Pound would buy more than 200 Yen, now one Pound will buy 138 Yen.

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