Ok, so after Subaru shedding some light on why they are not currently on the scheme, I was moved to write to Motability, i.e. from the customer’s perspective.
I took Subaru’s response to mean that from all of the cars that they offer in their range, i.e. not just the Forester, then at least one of them i.e. their entry level Impreza, needs to be priced at below the £24000 threshold in order for Subaru to be able to join the scheme, assuming that each particular vehicle and specification that they want offer would then be negotiated with Motability to determine Advance Payment figures. Knowing that the Impreza starts at £24325 on the road, it ‘at least appeared’ to be very harsh that just £325 was preventing Subaru from joining the scheme.
I received a call from one of the motability staff who advised that she had spoken to one of her pricing colleagues to clarify scheme entry requirements. She explained that the threshold of £24000 is applicable to each particular vehicle as opposed to the entry level vehicle in their range i.e. her explanation set out that for Subaru to join and offer the Forester for example, then there would need to be an entry level specification of Forester that sits below £24000 on the road.
That then seemed to make sense to me, and given that even the base XE spec of Forester will be a good bit more than £24000 I could then understand why there was a scheme entry barrier for the Foester.
However that then got me thinking about how other manufacturers offer particular cars. To explain where I’m coming from take these examples –
i) Mazda currently offer the CX5 Sport Nav+ Diesel 4wd Auto on the scheme, yet their published price list has the entry level CX5 SE-L 2wd Manual at £25,600.00 OTR i.e. £1600 above the £24000 threshold
ii) Volkswagon currently offer the Tiguan R Line 2wd Diesel Auto on the scheme, yet their published price list has the entry level Tiguan S 2wd manual at £25,350.00 OTR i.e. £1350 above the £24000 threshold
So even over just those two examples (and there will be more) I’m struggling to make sense of Motability’s explanation.
Can anyone shed any light on this as the more I dig into, it just seems to make less sense, not more.
Cheers, Mac