Car sales slump: of credit card, assured buyback and discount deals

Car sales are nose-diving and in February they have has hit a 12-year low ( read here ), due to poor consumer interest, which has been attributed to a slowing economy, rising inflation and high interest rates. Meanwhile, auto companies are desperately trying all means to get their bottom line in order. This has is resulted in an avalanche of offers. Here are four types of offers available as of now.

Credit Cards: Tata Motors is currently running on offer on its smallest car Nano. If you have a credit card, you can simply swipe the card at a dealer and drive out with a Nano car. The offer is available on Nano special edition and the offer is valid up to March 31. This zero percent EMI offer is available for credit cards of select banks such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and HSBC. You get a 3/6/9/12 EMI options to pay the amount. The amount is the road price amount which includes car price, insurance as well as RTO charges and the like.

[caption id=“attachment_658764” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] You can exchange your old car for a Vento sedan, and pay Rs 1 as down payment. AFP[/caption]

Old car exchange and Rs 1 offer: This offer is available on the Vento sedan, from Volkswagen. You can exchange your old car for a Vento sedan, and pay Rs 1 as down payment. After one year, you get to pay the difference amount. Keep in mind here that you get the deferred payment option only if the value of the exchanged car is half the value of the Vento. The Vento is in the price range of Rs 7 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. This means to avail of the facility, your old wheels should be worth at least Rs 3.5 lakh.

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Assured buyback: Yet again an offer from Tata Motors, where they offer a buyback assurance on its new Manza car. You can get 60 percent resale value after three years. Of course, there are a few conditions that apply to the offer. A Tata auto dealer told Firstpost, that resale value is on the ex-showroom price and not on the on-road price. Also, the car should be a single owner car, without any accident record and must be driven not more than 1 lakh kilometres. Also, to qualify for the assured buyback offer, the car should not have any hypothecation, or simply put no loan running on it. And the car can be exchanged to buy the next car from Tata Motors.

Savings offers: Hyundai is running a Magic March offer, wherein the company is offering savings on various car models. The savings are in the range of Rs 15, 000 to Rs 44,500. For instance, the i10 model has a savings offer of around Rs 42,500 while the Santro come with a savings of around Rs 26,350. Other companies such as Mahindra & Mahindra, General Motors and Toyota are also running various discount offers across segments.

So, there are deals and offers, but only time will tell if they give the necessary kick to the sleepy car sales. Should you go for these offers? If you have the funds, there’s nothing wrong in checking out the deals. But, if you don’t have the funds as of now, you might just want to wait and watch the interest rates movement. The RBI is about to review its monetary policy next week.