Sales of new luxury cars dropped 60 per cent in the first
quarter ended March on the back of stockouts of BMW, Porsche, Bentley
and Jeep brands.
Unit sales of the dealers including DT
Dobie and Inchcape Kenya stood at 26 in the review period compared to
65 a year earlier, according to statistics from the Kenya Motor Industry
Association (KMI).
Sales performance in the high-end
car segment was much worse than in the overall new vehicle market that
recorded a 14.5 per cent drop in orders to 2,741 units in the same
period.
The industry-wide slump was attributed to
difficulty in accessing loans and slow registration by the National
Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA).
There were no
Jeep, Bentley, Porsche or BMW sales in the review period, resulting in
one of the worst quarters for luxury car dealers.
Supply
and sales of BMW cars was disrupted after Simba Corporation lost the
franchise to rival Inchcape last year. DT Dobie has in recent years gone
slow in marketing its Jeep cars.
Global demand
Porsche and Bentleys have also been out of stock, partly due to global demand and supply dynamics.
Porsche
Centre Nairobi says it now has adequate stocks of the 2019 Porsche
Cayenne –its fastest-selling car. The new model is priced at $117,000
(Sh11.8 million) inclusive of taxes.
The stock-outs
left DT Dobie and Inchcape to dominate the luxury car market in the
first quarter. DT Dobie sold 13 Mercedes cars or half of the industry’s
total volumes, down from 15 of the German car models it moved a year
earlier.
The rest of the sales were by Inchcape which
moved 11 Land Rover and two Jaguar models for a total of 13 units, down
from 20 units the year before.
DT Dobie could get a
major sales boost later this year after the Judiciary published plans to
buy 121 Mercedes cars for judges and other staff.
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