"The financial crisis is now being felt on the luxury car segment. Whereas last autumn we estimated we will sell 40 Bentley cars on the domestic market in 2009, we have now lowered the target to 25," said Adrian Pascu, Bentley and Lamborghini brand manager with Porsche Romania.
In addition, the showroom dedicated to Porsche Romania's premium brands was pushed back for the end of the year instead of September as initially scheduled.
Players on the luxury car market say the decision to no longer purchase such a car was greatly influenced by the cost cutting campaign on which most companies have embarked.
"There are clients for luxury cars, they can afford to buy such a car, only that they postponed the time to do it. Businesspeople are now very concerned about saving their own companies, about cutting costs and about avoiding redundancies," said Mike Costache, country manager of Maserati, a brand imported in Romania by the AutoItalia Group. The harsher lending norms starting last October have affected the sales of both volume cars and luxury brands.
"Financing had a very powerful impact on sales. For instance, we had a client come in with a leasing application approved as late as this week, which had been filed early in December, therefore we are talking an over two-month delay. We can no longer compare today's sales with 2008, but rather with 2005," said Cristian Serban, commercial manager of Premium Auto, the importer of Land Rover and Jaguar in Romania, a company that is part of the Tiriac Holding.
Sales, however, are not frozen, and whereas the showroom was pushed back, the Lamborghini servicing centre will open early in the year.
"We are now in talks with potential clients, and we also have orders pending, but cannot provide accurate figures. We will have a Lamborghini servicing centre operational in the first half, complementing Bentley's," Pascu said.
A total of 40 Lamborghinis and 170 Bentleys had been registered in Romania by the end of last year. Though down to almost half of December level, sales of Premium Auto were on target.
"We delivered 28 Land Rovers and six Jaguars in January, which makes 34 cars in total, exactly the target we set out to achieve. This was the surprise, although the volume is almost down to half compared with December, when we sold 70 cars," Serban added.
As far as Maserati is concerned, there were clients who ordered a car and are now postponing buying them, and the importer is paying interest because the money is frozen.
"We did not deliver any cars in January. January is usually a edead' month. The only exception was last year when we delivered the six cars ordered at SIAB (Bucharest International Auto Show)," Costache said.
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