Recalls put pressure on car importers

Many car importers are unsure what to do with already imported Lexus GX 460 from Toyota and Honda’s Acura ZDX, the models which are being recalled by the manufacturers.

Toyota has announced that it has stopped making Lexus GX 460 after the warning about the possible rollover when cornering at high speeds. Cuong, Director of Luxury Car Dealership, a car trading company, complained that after the information was released, Luxury Car couldn’t sell any Lexus GX 460.

“The company has imported six GX 460s, but it is unclear if we can still sell the products,” Cuong said

Luxury Car Dealership previously planned to sell the cars at $165,000-168,000 per car. It now has to lower the sale prices to $148,000 per car and accept the loss of $6000-7000 in an attempt to lure buyers.

“Despite the price decreases, they (buyers) are not interested in GX460,” Cuong said.

Not only Luxury Car Dealership, but many other car dealers as well, all who have GX460s sitting idle.

Nguyen Trong Hung from Auto GP also said that he has offered the generous discounts of up to $1000, but it has not helped him find customers.

Meanwhile, Tuan from HTC Auto said that the 10 GX 460s HTC Auto has imported, are being stored at the port, because Tuan knows that the cars won’t sell and it’s no use to bring the cars to the showroom.

Tuan related that HTC Auto was lucky enough to sell two GX 460s earlier this year. But after the information about the car error was released, the buyers of GX 460s many times called HTC Auto to ask for more information.

“They spent three billion dong to buy the cars, and they are now also like cats on hot bricks, because they cannot sell the cars to others if they want to,” Cuong said.

Similarly, Son Tung Auto, has sold two of the five GX 460s it imported, and no client is interested in the car these days.

Car importers said that they have been overwhelmed by many unexpected manufacturing errors and they do not know what to do with the recalled cars.

Not only Lexus GS 460, but also many other models such as Venza, Camry, Acura ZDX have also made car dealers suffer.

Cuong related that Venza was the hot model in 2009 and was favoured among MPV models. That was why Luxury Car and many other car dealers rushed to import Venza for domestic sale. The import prices, depending on options, were between $70,000 and 82,000 per car.

Just a few months later, when only a handful of cars had been sold, there was information about the problem with the brake system of Venza. Immediately, Venza sales plummeted. Cuong said that his showroom still has 20 unsold Venzas out of the 40-50 imported ones. The model cannot find any buyer, though the price of the car has been lowered to $66,000-75,000 per car.

Trinh Vinh Ha, Deputy Director of Son Tung Auto, said that now all car importers have to ‘strain their ears’ to listen for the any news in the world market to decide what to import and what to avoid.

Vietnamnet

Tags: Vietnam automotive, Vietnam automotive industry, Vietnam autos, Vietnam car import