COVID-19 may have played a role in snapping Subaru of America's 12- year streak of sales increases and 11-year streak of record deliveries last year, but a third streak remained intact.
Its U.S. market share grew — the ninth consecutive year of such progress — despite a 13 percent decline in its sales. The Japanese company inched up 0.1 percent in 2020 to a 4.2 percent market share, while the pandemic-stricken nation suffered a 14 percent plunge in volume.
"It wasn't a huge increase, but I think the way we try to do business is just keep it steady and do everything we can to keep our foundation as solid as we can," said Jeff Walters, Subaru of America's senior vice president of sales. "We were happy, given some of the bigger challenges we had when things really started falling off the rails in the spring, that we could still turn out a market share increase."