Coming from a strong 2017, where Philippine sales reached 116 percent of target, Motor Image, the exclusive distributor of Subaru eyes strong growth amidst the new vehicle excise tax this year. Speaking to members of the Philippine media at the regional launch of EyeSight and the 2018 Subaru XV and Outback in Singapore, Mr. Glenn Tan, Managing Director of Tan Chong International Limited (TCIL), the parent company of Motor Image remains confident that Motor Image’s Philippine sales will continue to grow.

“Across the 10 markets that Motor Image handles, we have seen tremendous gains,” says Mr. Tan. “The Philippines, in particular, has been very strong in 2017. They have actually been able to outsell Italy.”

Citing the growing middle class as in important factor to Motor Image’s growth, Mr. Tan says that the company has begun to re-orient its marketing and communication strategy to attract new customers.

“While Subaru enjoys a very loyal following over the past decade we have been in the Philippines, we seek to attract new customers. Therefore, our focus is to communicate Subaru as a lifestyle brand to people who probably don’t understand much about the core technology,” Mr. Tan explained. “In order to do this, we are in the process of revamping our website to help explain what makes Subaru different to customers. We also plan to open new dealerships in Cavite and Pangasinan to bring our dealer count in the Philippines to 18 by the end of 2018.”

When asked specifically about the effect of the new excise tax of Subaru vehicles, Mr. Tan says that Motor Image Pilipinas will offer their current SRPs until the end of January. He does caution that stocks are severely limited because of the growing demand for their vehicle. For example, the Subaru XV is all but sold out (the waiting list has stretched to about two months).

After that though, Mr. Tan says that Subaru will raise their SRPs by just 5 percent across the board. Despite their segment being heavily penalized by the new excise tax, Mr. Tan says that his company has decided to absorb the increase at least up until the Manila International Auto Show (MIAS) in April.

This is the official prices of Subaru vehicles effective February 2018:


Vehicles with an SRP in the P 1.4 million to 2 million range should have been penalized heavily under TRAIN. In fact, in a previous scenario which we ran last December, a vehicle such as the Subaru XV 2.0i-S should have seen a 9 percent increase to P 1.68 million. Yet, thanks to Motor Image absorbing some of the excise tax, the SRP ended up at P 1,618,000 or just an increase of 5.20 percent. It must be said though that despite Motor Image’s decision to absorb some of the excise tax, our computations ended up just 3.65 percent off.