Car sales remain steady despite election chaos

Car sales remain steady despite election chaos

By John Aglionby

SALES of new vehicles have remained steady in the lead up to
the general election, in contrast to earlier predictions of
significant falls.

Despite vivid pictures in the media of vandalized vehicles and
horror stories of election campaigners clambering all over cars
during rallies, the general election campaign and the ensuing
fears of political instability have not affected car sales in the
last month as much as dealers had anticipated.

All companies contacted said they had projected a drop-off in
sales but few said the downturn had been as large as they had
expected.

Bintoro Tjitrowirjo, general manager of PT Tjahja Sakti Motor
Corp which distributes BMWs in Indonesia, said: "We are glad that
the campaign ended yesterday but it did not have that much of an
effect on sales. The figures compare well with the same period
last year.

"And we offer fully comprehensive insurance when we sell a BMW
so, people buying our cars do not have much to worry about
anyway."

Mitsubishi's vice president, Herman Latif, said the company's
sales have also held up well. He said that sales in the last
three months were 16 percent up on the same period last year.

"We had anticipated a slight decline in sales but there was
almost no significant effect," he said.

Toyota's marketing executive, Darmadji, said his company had
expected sales to dip during the campaign. "From our experience
of previous campaigns, people tend to postpone activities such as
buying cars until things have settled down again, but as far as
we can tell our market share is still stable."

Lela Pello, of Mercedes Benz, echoed Darmadji's sentiments.
"If you look at our business from an overall perspective we do
not seem to be affected by the election.

"However, there does seem to be a bit of a wait-and-see
attitude among buyers. Some people are postponing buying until
after the election but we expect any decreases to be only very
temporary in nature."

This was confirmed by a couple coming out of a South Jakarta
BMW showroom. Arief Widianto said: "We have been planning to
replace our four-year-old for some time. However, we thought it
would be safer and less risky to wait until next month.

"It's not that we live in a violent neighborhood but one just
is never quite sure what is going to happen at any time."