Subaru Announces Tribeca Price, Axes Baja
Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 1:16 am
Quote, originally posted by The Car Connection »Subaru has priced the B9 Tribeca, the five- or seven-passenger SUV it will offer for sale June 1. The base five-seater, featuring ABS, curtain airbags, and a CD player, starts at $30,695. The least expensive seven-seater adds rear air conditioning and checks in at $32,395, while the most expensive seven-seater with leather seating, a CD changer, and a DVD entertainment and DVD navigation system will go for $37,695. The biggest Subaru ever, the Tribeca is built on a stretched Legacy/Outback platform and sports a 250-hp flat six with 219 lb-ft of torque coupled to a five-speed automatic. It will be sold in theU.S., Canada, and later, in South America and Japan.Subaru plans to build about 36,000 Tribecas each year at its plant in West Lafayette, Ind. The plant currently builds about 100,000 Legacy/Outback models each year, and will add a small number of Tribeca-derived Saab 9-6X SUVs within the next year, leaving the factory still with capacity to produce more models. One of them will not be the Baja, however; Subaru has decided to pull the plug on the truck-bedded ute after the 2006 model year, in part because modifying the vehicle for smart-airbag technology would not pay. As for Subaru's compact Impreza model, execs say the vehicle will be freshened this August for the 2006 model year. A full model change occurs in 2007, and at that time it's likely the Impreza will get a new name more fitting with the rest of the vehicles in the lineup. -Marty Padgett I can't believe it took them this long to kill that Baja.