Biggest-ever Car Discounts - Mercedes Media Bash

Cairo - Berlin - Detroit / It seems that car buyers worldwide are the winners in the current financial crisis, since car manufacturers are facing an extremely hard time selling their car due to the new restrictions in car loans through the banks.
That led to car discounts never experienced before in Egypt, Europe and the USA.

In Egypt some ignorant car dealers are still trying to �convince’ the customers and themselves that the Egyptian car market in �in best health’ and refuse to admit there is a crisis and therefore offer any discounts.


Other dealers like FIAT or OPEL in Egypt are slightly smarter. Fiat Egypt is selling the Fiat Bravo for 125.000 LE instead of 135.000 LE, the Fiat Linea for 95.000 LE instead of 104.000 LE, the Fiat Punto for 90.000 instead of 100.000 LE and last but not least the Fiat Punto for 72.900 LE instead of 75.000 LE.
Opel Egypt is expected to give up to 25.000 LE on some of its models this weekend. Although Opel sources said the discount is due to the fall of the Euro, it is strange that only some models and NOT all Opel models will be discounted. I am sure Opel will have a good excuse for that.

Mercedes and BMW prices in Egypt have also fallen and are expected to fall for at least another 20-30 % in the next few weeks or months. The prices of locally-assembled car models will go down much more then the prices of imported cars due to the incredible huge profit margin of the Made-in-Egypt cars, which in some cases reach 150-200 % (!) whereas the profit margin in the imported cars varies between 10-40% only.

In Germany most models from Skoda, BMW, Mercedes, VW and Audi can be purchased with a 20-35 % discount already and they are expected to become even more cheaper within the next few weeks.
In the USA car prices have already been granted discounts with up to 50 % making it easy to buy a Dodge Ram for 16.000 $ instead of 32.000 $. So, if you always dreamt of owning such a 4x4 Pick-up truck now it is the time to do so.
In Europe new car discounts are at their most generous level in eight years and could get even bigger, according to research by What Car?.
Average What Car? Target Price savings stand at ?£1932, ?£244 more than at the beginning of the year and more than double the ?£974 average from 2001.*
That means it’s already a great time to get a cracking offer, but it could get even better for buyers as dealers become increasingly desperate for business in a plummeting new car market.

Official registration figures show that the new car market is down 23% but the true figure, taking out cars that have been registered by dealers, could be as much as 30% or 35%.
What Car? has heard of cars being supplied to dealers at 40% of their list price, so the prospect of the first half-price deal might not be far off. Internet brokers in the UK offer a Citro?«n Xsara Picasso for ?£8568, which is tantalisingly close to this at 45% off the ?£15,616 list price.
Shop around and you can get a Ford S-Max or Galaxy for less than ?£15,000, for instance – but it’s not just big, or old, cars that come with big savings.
You can get 10% of the latest version of the Volkswagen Golf Mark with another UK-based internet broker, and that’s before the first cars have even been delivered to their owners.
The Ford Fiesta has only just been launched as well, but you can slash 15% off the list price straight away by at a third internet broker.

Our reigning What Car? Car of the Year, the Jaguar XF, is up for grabs at ?£2187 off the ?£31,616 list price online. The same company can also chop an amazing ?£11,500 off a Jaguar XJ, dropping it to ?£33,764.
What Car? editor Steve Fowler said: �Even if you’re not comfortable haggling on a price, it should be simple to get a brilliant bargain at the moment.
�With so few people dipping into their pockets, sales staff will be almost begging buyers to make an offer.’
What Car? mystery shops thousands of new car dealers every month to come up with its Target Price. It shows the maximum you should pay for any new car and is a figure you should use as a starting point for haggling at your local dealer, especially in the current

financial climate. If a dealer refuses to match Target Price, What Car? promises to put the consumer in touch with a dealer who will.
We at Auto Arabia decided to start such an automotive mystery shopping in Egypt and the Middle East as well, to get a real analysis on the prices in the Middle East in general and in Egypt in specific.

And generally we highly advice and recommend our readers to be very patient these days when it comes to buying a new car. Car prices in Egypt will experience discounts they have never experienced before. For several reasons: The Egyptian car market has stagnated over the past 9 months, in contrary to what most car importers and dealer were �claiming’ and �selling’ to the local newspaper and media. And that stagnation was even before the world-wide financial crisis started.
Now most of the Egyptian car dealers and importer will learn it the hard way how to take care of their customers and offer them good prices and good service together with a �reasonable’ profit margin, since they start begging for new customers in the weeks and months. And only the honest and professional dealers will survive this crisis in Egypt.

But the funniest thing was the behavior of Mercedes Benz Egypt in the recent weeks. After facing severe problems in reaching their target of S-Class sales with the S500 during the last year, the decided to �complete’ the S-Class class range with the cheaper S350. But when this trick also didn’t attract S-Class customers to the show-rooms they decided to offer a FULL and free 3-years service and 3 years & 100.000km warranty to all new S-Class owners. And they said that they decided to offer this �unique’ warranty & service offer (which is by the way the standard service & warranty package in most parts of Europe and the USA) as they were celebrating this year ’10 Years of Excellence’ and ’10 Years of Mercedes Benz Made-In-Egypt cars’ due to the tenth anniversary of the Egyptian Mercedes Benz (EGA) factory in Cairo.

And while the Mercedes Benz marketing team around Zakaria Mackary and his assistant were spending hundreds of thousands of pounds in advertorials and �paid full-page’ article in the Al-Ahram and Akhbar El Yom newspaper, they found out on a very hard way that not every media in Egypt were convinced with what Mercedes Benz Egypt and its Marketing & PR department were trying to claim in their paid advertorials in the major newspapers.

Some newspapers, magazines and automotive online portals didn’t buy this �sudden’ change in the after-sales and customer-care policy of Mercedes Benz Egypt.

Readers of the independent newspapers Sout El Omma were also able to read full-page coverage (20.10.2008 & 03.11.2008 issue) about the 10 years anniversary of Mercedes Benz Egypt but with totally different headlines. The headlines were: �Mercedes Benz Egypt Factory – 10 years full of disasters’ on 3.11.2008 and �Mercedes Benz Egypt Factory – 10 Years of misleading information and rip-off’.

This surely shows in what kind of illusion the decision-maker of Mercedes Benz are living in and also shows how deep Mercedes Benz Egypt and their car prices will fall in the next few months and years, especially when the customs on European cars will reach 0 % and an imported German-built Mercedes S 500 will only cost 640.000 LE (app. 80.000 Euros) instead of the 1.340.000 LE which you have to pay for a Made-In-Egypt Mercedes S500 these days.

I can hardly wait for the day when the Egyptian customs on European cars will go down to 0% soon, as I will surely be the first one to buy an original Mercedes Benz from Germany.