Now luxury steps out of Ahmedabad! Luxury car dealers in the city are now in the process of spreading wings to districts like Surat, Rajkot among others.
Dealers, at the same time, are also upgrading there Ahmedabad dealerships to sell pre-owned luxury cars. Considering each showroom calling for an investment close to Rs 25-30 crore, one can expect over Rs 100 crore worth expansion plans lined up by the three major premium car dealers in the city, Parsoli's BMW, Benchmark Cars' Mercedes and Audi Ahmedabad, in the near future.
City based BMW dealer Parsoli Motors opened its new sales and service showroom at Surat earlier this month. It is now in the process of assessing the throughput of major cities across the state in order to gauge the feasibility of setting up showrooms there. "We plan to come up with one showroom each in the north, south, east and west corners of the state. Surat is very vibrant now, and is a booming market for luxury cars. So, we started off with Surat, other showrooms can come in at places like Rajkot among others.", said Talha Sareshwala, managing director of Parsoli Motors. He added that the scope for luxury cars is huge in places like Vapi, Bharuch, Rajkot, Jamnagar, Bhavnagar in Gujarat.
Sareshwala informed that around 90-95 premium cars now sell per month in the city, and BMW enjoys a 40 per cent market share. He is also working on coming up with a BMW pre-owned cars showroom here in the city. "We are planning to have a BMW Premium Selection showroom here in the city. It will come up within this year.", Sareshwala said. BMW Ahmedabad is experiencing a 40-45 per cent annual growth rate. The dealership has sold over 300 BMWs in 2010.
Meanwhile, another German luxury car maker and BMW's arch rival Mercedes Benz India has already opened its pre-owned cars service, 'Proven Exclusivity Program' in the city recently. The German auto major that is present in the Indian market over a decade now has around 30,000 cars plying on the road. It has decided to procure cars that are less than six years old from its existing customers, refurbish them and sell through their outlets.
Paras Somani, executive director of Benchmark Cars, the Mercedes dealership in the city said that he expected around 10 per cent of net sales to come from pre-owned cars in the city. Gujarat is the third largest market for Mercedes after Delhi and Mumbai, where it enjoys close to 40 per cent market share. Benchmark too has come up with a showroom at Surat, and is planning to come up with a service center at Vadodara.
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Coming to Audi, which launched its premium A8 L sedan here this week, is also looking at expanding its footprint to Surat together with opening a pre-owned cars service here in Ahmedabad.
Samir Mistry, managing director, of Audi Ahmedabad said, "We are coming up with a new showroom at Surat by end of April, while we are also upgrading our current showroom in Ahmedabad to a 20,000 square feet one by February 2012. We plan to start a pre-owned cars service in Ahmedabad soon." Audi sold 285 cars in Ahmedabad in 2010, up 60 per cent from 2009.