New Cars Excited Gloomy Auto Market #1

Coincided to its 100th year old commemoration Audi has just released its Turbo Diesel Q5 SUV in Indonesia market, one day short of the surprise attack on JW Marriot and Ritz Carlton Hotel in Jakarta. The 2.0 Turbo FSI Q5 features Dual Clutch S-Tronic Transmission providing 3 driving modes of; Comfort, Auto and Dynamic throughout its 7 gearing ratio shifts. The high performance Diesel engine peaks at 211 hp @6000 rpm and 350 Nm @4200 rpm, yet efficient at fuel consumption of 8.5 L per 100 km.

Previously in early July a new revised 2.5 Turbo Diesel Ford Everest SUV was also being introduced. Ford Everest is focusing on great daily driving usability of 330 Nm torque at low 1800 rpm, excellent features to cope with; traffic jam, rough terrain crawling and high towing capacity. Unfortunately most privately bought Everest would never see the latter two features with the exception of those bought for fleet purposes, in fact Everest sales is mostly contributed by Multi National Company (MNC) operating in the most remote and rough terrain areas.

Ford Everest in particular leads the full 4x4 SUV models market segment at 737 units sold in 2008. Such segment is rare indeed as the most popular Honda SUV CR-V did only 17,800 with Suzuki Grand Vitara and Nissan X-Trail trailing behind at 5,515 and 3,699 respectively in 4x2 sub segments. The other SUV originating from American GM sold at 912 units was none other than Chevrolet Captiva. Where as Land Rover has made 12 sales up to May Year To Date (YTD) down from 52 units in the whole 2008 of previous year, the best British SUV sold 7 fewer than overall Peugeot brand (subcompact and MPV segments only).

Despite of its less than half price compare to Q5 the top of the line XLT 4x4 Ford Everest cost at Rp. 404 Millions (approximately US $ 40 grand) is still beyond the majority car purchasing power of the most Indonesian buyers. Both sales of Honda Accord and Toyota Camry reach only in average 50 and 100 units per month respectively, even less than that in recent months. Bear in mind that Camry being the popular midsize car leads its segment at 16.1%.

Merely two days prior to the Friday morning’s attacks at those two Hotels at Mega Kuningan Jakarta, Toyota Indonesia introduced its newly revised Camry; slated at exactly half the price of Audi Q5, Toyota has firmly targeted 800 units to be sold for the remaining year. Its main rival by June YTD the Accord sold 304 units compare to 2,170 for the whole previous year.

Honda brand alone suffered -38% reductions from 8,115 the year 2008 sales to April as compare to this year figures of 5,006. Yet Honda Indonesia might have its sigh relieved as 2,630 units were sold in June 2009 alone, with 340 units contributed solely by the newly released MPV Honda Freed within just two days. The Indonesian Auto market has peak seasonal sales during December as well as at the end of Ramadhan month which will occur in September 2009, there is still some hope! Honda’s sales YTD in June was 15,252; much less than half to the last year’s figures of 52,458. New Cars Excited Gloomy Auto Market to be continued ……

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