The Forester factor: an unexpected reason for limited BRZ / FR-S / 86 production
 

Over the years, I've made it a point to chat with Subaru of America's National Manager of Product Communications Dominick Infante whenever he and I coincide at an auto show press conference. This year in New York, he revealed an unexpected and surprising bit of information: the common belief that the entire Gunma Main Plant is building nothing but BRZs and its Toyota and Scion-badged siblings is not really true. It seems that Subaru's other carmaking plant, the Gunma Yajima facility, can't meet all the worldwide demand for the Subaru Forester. Thus, some Foresters are built at a line at Gunma Main. Further, some Impreza assembly is also earmarked for Gunma Main around March 2013.

All this could, theoretically, crimp FR-S / BRZ production. I delve further on the issue, along with possible ramifications and solutions in this piece I wrote for Kaizen Factor:

http://kaizenfactor.wordpress.com/20...ty-is-limited/

That's been well known for awhile now. The Twins are filling excess production left over after Forester production.

Someone was doing the math recently on how much production was available at Gunma and one of the numbers included Forester production. I think it was in the thread about the 100k production goal.

Thanks anyway.

After the Evo tearup they won't have to worry about their production limits anymore..:D

LOL...they are clearly in the minority compared to all the other reviews out there. As many have already said, it will be up to us, the individual buyers...who btw, will most likely not be driving on the track or running this car at the limits on the way to work. :)
I'm still excited for my first drive and ultimately buying this car.

Dude no one in their right mind get compare the sheer good looks of the BRZ to the 370 or miata... The BRZ looks like a sports car where as the others don't even come close.

No, it wasn't in that thread. That one, in fact, was one of the linked sources in my Kaizen Factor article. I went over that thread and not a word about Forester in there.

I'd really love it if you or another member of the FT86Club.com community would recall what the thread was. I just did a "Forester" search on here, and came up with 148 results, none of which stands out as a strong candidate, judging by the titles alone.

I will admit that my article is crying out for a sequel. A member of the NASIOC forums correctly pointed out that the Gunma Main Plant is about 25% larger than Gunma Yajima, which does just fine building Exiga, Impreza, Forester and Legacys (the latter for outside North America). The plant size numbers were staring me in the face in the Fuji Heavy Industries official website (on a page also linked to the Kaizen Factor story) but I didn't pay attention to them or think to factor them into the story.

I'm also awaiting possible reactions or comments from Subaru...

Shoot, I thought it was that one so now I don't know where I saw it. @.@

Hype just to get you to pay over MSRP. There will be plenty of these cars. Its not like they were ever going to sell 50k to 100k units. 6k to 15k units of the BRZ is probably enough.