Is this maybe the reason that 98% of vehicle dealers that I have interacted with have openly admitted to me that they have given their speedometers a shave now and then just to make the stock move as they put it.
Just the past week the last week of August 2020, I had 3 customers that enquired about vehicles that are older than 10 years and still sounded astonished when I told them that the vehicles have over 200 000km on the odometer.
An average south african vehicle does 25000km per annum. So that makes an average vehicle on our roads to be sitting on +-125000km after 5 years . So if I get a call from Johannes , and Johannes is shopping for a Toyota Conquest (1996) and Johannes wants it to have under 100 000km , do u continue engaging Johannes as a customer or do I just think that Johannes is pushing time (Tyre kicker) as we call in our circles. Honestly I think Johannes doesn’t want to face reality . Johannes has R22000 ($1300) to spend.
So do we blame dealers of motor vehicles for taking a 1996 Toyota Corolla ,fixes it there and there to make it descent and reducing the milleage from 500990km to just 185000km just inorder to make the stock move… Because from experience I have seen if the speedometer is high the customers don’t buy the vehicle .
This happens right across the market from the cheapest to Premium vehicles. With Premium vehicles let’s take a BMW for instance. They come with a 100 000km or 5 year motorplan which ever one that comes 1st. So u would generally get the service history between 0 – 100000km then after that, most customers can’t afford to service the vehicle with dealers then they generally take the vehicle to their own prefared mechanic or workshop, the rest is history because from here onwards the is no track record of who really serviced the vehicle and bye bye speedometer reading.
So the Question who do we blame the dealer or Johannes?
This is a Global phenomenon so iam possing this question to everyone from Germany, Lesotho, South America , Nigeria, China, India, America this happens across the board.
Let’s engage ……holla ,sharp Fede.
Regards
Stockholder.
