Subaru’s UK operation is being radically overhauled in wake of a poor 2020 result, not just due to Covid.

According to an interview with Auto Car UK, the Japanese firm suffered a “ridiculous” year for sales in 2020.

While most brands recorded substantial falls in registrations across the country, due to the pandemic Subaru was the hardest hit, with a year-on-year decrease of more than 68 per cent compared with 2019. In total, it registered 951 cars last year, compared with just under 3000 in 2019.

“2020 was a horrible year,” Subaru UK boss John Hurtig told Auto Car UK. “What can you say? It’s just an embarrassing number. There’s no more context, to be honest.”

“As a brand, we had a very high registration number in December 2019,” he told the car magazine. “In fact, it was actually the best month Subaru UK has had ever. So we went into 2020 with a big backlog.”

Subaru UK pre-registered cars en masse in December 2019 to avoid hefty fleet-average emissions fines when the European Union’s new CO2-cutting regulations came into force in January 2020. Those cars were then sold throughout the year as discounted pre-registration.

Hurtig also stated that Subaru owners in the UK were predominantly older, and affected by Covid lockdown restrictions so were not in the market to buy a new vehicle.

He told Auto Car UK that he had an “aggressive” plan to expand the network in the UK, and bring a “new attitude” across the board.

Subaru NZ finished the year with 2429 registrations, compared with 3466 in 2019. The brand will be launching the all-new Outback next month.