Car market 'slow' despite 'whirlwind' of price reductions

Car manufacturers continue to reduce prices to unbelievable depths. Typically, the car model that is quite 'hot' on the market like Hyundai's Santa Fe is reduced by up to 240 million VND/car.

Many popular car models have been deeply discounted but few people are buying them. Photo: Ng. Nga

Not only Korean cars, famous car brands from Japan, Germany... also jumped into the whirlwind of deep discounts this November. Mitsubishi's Outlander Crossover (imported from Japan) also announced a reduction of more than 200 million VND for the 2.0L and 2.4L models, the old price of more than 1.1 billion VND is now only more than 950 million VND. In addition, the Mitsubishi Mirage line was also reported by car dealers in the south to have a reduction of 40 - 60 million VND/car, the selling price from nearly 500 million VND, now down to about 450 million VND for cars with 1.2L capacity, 6-speed manual transmission, and the small manual and automatic models from 450 million VND down to about 390 million VND/car.

However, the most shocking thing to the market is Toyota's popular Vios car line. After many massive price reductions, now the popular version on the market, Vios Limo, has been deeply reduced to 484 million VND, the remaining 4 lines have also been reduced to under 644 million VND/car. So it can be said that Toyota's cars are at a record low price. In addition to the Vios line, the Innova and Corolla lines of this company also reduced from 25 - 50 million VND/car in November.

A series of price cuts by car manufacturers is not unexpected in preparation for the early 2018 game, when taxes on cars with engine capacity under 2.0L imported from countries in the ASEAN region will be 0%.

However, despite the continuous price reduction to stimulate demand, the number of car buyers seems to be unrelated to this price reduction storm. Statistics from the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association (VAMA) show that in the first 10 months of the year, Vietnamese people bought 220,121 new cars of all kinds, down 9% compared to the same period last year. Since the beginning of the year, according to VAMA's forecast, the growth of the Vietnamese car market must reach over 10%, or about 330,000 units. However, with the updated data so far, according to forecasts from the business community, the Vietnamese car market is unlikely to grow as expected.

According to TNO