Subaru has been winning a lot lately. It’s one of the few brands that consistently delivers positive sales figures while some of the other automakers struggle. So you would think with an in-demand lineup deals would be hard to come by, but even Subaru dealers are blowing out inventory with discounts that you may want to know about.




As a professional car shopper, I recommend the Subaru brand frequently and have probably brokered hundreds of Subaru deals. In my experience, Subaru dealers tend to be a bit better about the whole internet sales thing than other mainstream brands and it’s not hard to find a deal that a buyer can feel good about.




Recently I was able to score some deals on Subarus in a variety of metro areas that I would consider an unprecedented level of discounts. Here are some screenshots of quotes to give you an idea of what is possible.

I had a customer in the Pacific Northwest—I know, someone up there shopping for a Subaru, imagine that—looking for a 2018 Forester Premium Black Edition. Not an easy car to find in that area. The MSRP on that vehicle is $30,142. One of my established contacts in the region came back with a quote of around $4,000 off.



The next one is a fully loaded 2018 Subaru Outback 3.6 R Touring in the Baltimore/D.C. region. These cars are not cheap with a sticker price of $40,555, but there are a lot of folks that will go for a loaded Subaru rather than skimp out on base model Volvo or Audi. When a dealer offers more than $5,500 off the sticker price, that is a hard value to argue with.




In Colorado—another Subaru stronghold—I had a guy looking for a used 2017 Forester XT Touring. As we know the turbocharged Forester will be discontinued for the 2019 model year so now is the time to grab your Forester with the heart of a WRX.




I found a nice low mile example for just under $31,000 which would normally pose significant savings over a new model that retails for about $38,000. However, when we factored in the massive discount of about $4800 and the zero percent APR financing the payments between the new one and the used one were practically identical.




And finally, I had a customer in New York City who wanted a 2018 Forester 2.5 Touring. Now this one was a bit more of a battle, but I was able to use the following quote against another dealer to beat the price by $300 bringing the total savings to a still impressive $3,766.






I was told by a sales manager that while Subaru doesn’t do advertised rebates like other brands, the automaker will give what is called “dealer cash” to certain stores within certain regions to keep prices aggressive. Some regions will get more dealer cash than others hence the difference in some of these discounts in various areas and it is up to the dealership to decide how much of that savings to pass on to the customer. These “hidden rebates,” as they are sometimes called, also vary from month to month just like your more traditional incentives. As the remaining 2018 inventory starts to clear out and the 2019 models roll in, Subaru may pull back some of those additional discounts.


Another takeaway from this is that buyers should know that often manufacturers will use heavy discounts and rebates well before new models arrive and that it may not be wise to wait until the next model year cars are in the showroom. By then, it may be too late to find the exact car you want for the right price.