Subaru Press Website - A Simply Great Press & Media Service

Applause for a simple and yet very informative website, the German Subaru Press website: www.subaru-presse.de. Straight forward, no flash, an easy to navigate image resource pool with a great number of photos per model and range. There is good background info on tech as well as on the company. It is also very easy to find photos of past models. Thank you, Ladies, you do a marvelous job.

My only suggestion would be to have some kind of newsletter or a mailing list, Google Group subscription or RSS feed. Or an automated Twitter feed (the http://twitter.com/subarupresse was only used for last year's Dakar Rally news). Or how about a nice Google+ presence :-) Maybe I couldn't find such a service. If so blame me.

I often do a photo research for a post. I mostly use Wikipedia or Flickr images published under Creative Commons licence. Or I use the manufacturers' pics (or for convenience web services like netcarshow.com). The galleries on most car manufacturers websites are a bit too impractical and  the photos are too brochure-like.

The configurators are fun, but flawed. The resutling images are too small or too artificial. Most car configurators drive me nuts anyway. You can't have this colour with that package or these wheels etc. And then try to download "your car" off that configurator without having to to create a personal login and leave all kinds of personal data.

I often yawn for simple non-flash sites. How many times have the manufacturers' websites crashed your browser session, the entire browser or maybe frozen your computer? Fortunately I haven't come across a site for quite a while, which instead of cars showed me an error message: "Sorry, this site is optimized for Internet Explorer" :-) These sites apparently didn't want to sell cars but educate you about using a specific browser - those days seem to be finally over.

Most brands offer special press dedicated logins. But, boy, are these processes annoying. First you need to find these sites or website sections. Then you need to apply and beg. No PR person has yet denied me access, but it could take a few days until approven. Come on. I like to write blog posts spontaneously. Waiting hours and days to access and use photos is not very helpful. That's why I really appreciate the Subaru effort.

And then there are the numbers and types of vehicles sold. Trying to find that kind of info makes you wonder if that data is generally a trade secret. Not so Subaru Germany. It's simply in the news stream, directly on the home page. The sales stats are easy too read and very usable in plain HTML format. Thank you thank you thank you !!!!!!

The Subaru site shows that a small, pragmatic and dedicated team can do wonders :-)

BTW In general the Subaru websites seem to be pretty straight forward, no fuzz, little flash. The whole brand experience reflects that. Professionalism, dedication, down to earth business and an engineering core which is authentic and genuine. With some ticks and twists, the all wheel drive and the Boxer flat 4 and flat 6 engines. They have recently given up another nice Subaru tradition, the frameless doors. Please, dear Subarians, let the next Impreza and Legacy generations have frameless doors again. Don't try to look too much like Toyotas :-)