Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., the carmaker most reliant on exports from Japan, said it will stick to a strategy of producing the bulk of the company's Subaru vehicles at home as the yen strengthens.
The owner of Subaru brand, long known for all-wheel-drive vehicles, does not want to focus narrowly on the impact of foreign exchange, Chief Executive Officer Yasuyuki Yoshinaga, 62, said in an interview Friday. "We will end up adopting strategies similar to big automakers and lose our uniqueness."
Yoshinaga is looking to maintain the course at a time the company has forecast its first profit decline in five years, even though its deliveries will cross 1 million vehicles in the current fiscal year. A stronger yen makes its cars sold overseas more expensive, hurting demand as well as cutting the value of repatriated earnings. A change to offset the impact of the yen would mean more fixed costs, and building compact cars that Subaru is not good at, he said.