Mercedes and BMW Lead Georgia’s Used Car Market

“The bestseller of the year 2008/2009 is Toyota Prado. It’s a Japanese vehicle of the highest quality for which demand is constant. Such Japanese brands as Toyota Nissan and Mitsubishi are quite popular in Georgia today also,” Irakli Zaria, General Manager of Matemotors Ltd, told The FINANCIAL.

“As the auto market grows up the population has an increasing choice of brands and models. But the Japanese brands occupy a very special niche. Among these brands Toyota is the leader in sales. The popularity of Toyota among other brands can be explained very easily: incomparable quality, refined design and acceptable prices,” Zaria says.

“The most popular and bestselling cars for the year 2008/2009 in Georgia, according to the sales of our company is the Toyota Prado and Corolla. The popularity of these brands among Georgians are due to their quality, prices and brand. From the above mentioned favourite brands our company in 2008 sold 400 Prado and 350 Corolla. In the first quarter of 2009, we sold 90 Prado and 80 Corolla,” says Tina Revazishvili, representative of Toyota Center Tbilisi .

The total number of cars sold by Toyota Centre Tbilisi in 2008 was 3,773.

After the beginning of the global recession Toyota decreased prices on cars by 15%.

“The most popular and bestselling car for the year 2008/2009 in Georgia, according to the sales of our company is the ML-Class. Of the above mentioned favourite brand among Georgians, our company sold 35 cars in 2008 and in the first quarter of 2009 - 7,” says Lasha Lomidze, Sales Manager of Mercedes-Benz Georgia.

Mercedes-Benz has imported 138 passenger cars; 30 commercial vehicles in 2008 and 21 passenger cars and 1 commercial vehicle in 2009.

“In total in 2008 we sold 125 passenger cars and 16 commercial vehicles. In 2009 we sold 14 passenger cars and 2 commercial vehicles,” Lomidze says.

After the beginning of the global recession, Mercedes-Benz Georgia has decreased prices on cars by 10-20%.

“In the US and the West car producing companies started creating the hybrid-electric vehicle, which has an additional electric engine, economizing fuel consumption. As Lomidze, Mercedes-Benz notes, in Georgia the demand for such autos has not increased.

“These cars have a great future I think, as a new combined type of engine is a great saving of money on fuel and at the same tame it’s less polluting. The only minus is that it’s less powerful, but this problem is being worked on,” Zaria declares.

“Matemotors doesn’t sell hybrid-electric vehicles yet. The reason is that the new type of engine requires special service which is not available at the moment. The second reason is demand, which is still very low. The general part of the population is not informed enough about the advantages of this new generation of cars, and for the rest the price is just not realistic. However in a few years the hybrid engines will gradually overtake petrol engines,” Zaria notes.

After the beginning of the global recession we used to have sales of up to 15-20%.

“Now we offer our customers interest-free credit allowing purchasing of a vehicle by instalments without any percent charge. The credit duration is one year,” Zaria says.

According to information on the car sales web pages auto.ge and myauto.ge, the leading car makes for second hand cars are Mercedes-Benz and BMW.

According to the information of myauto.ge, the leading top ten car brands offered for sale on our web page are as follows: Mercedes-Benz, with a total number of 2,692, BMW - 2,264, Volkswagen - 1,304, Mitsubishi - 1,169, Honda - 890, Opel - 851, Toyota - 731, Audi - 651, Nissan - 411, Subaru - 407.