Flood damage keeps car buyers jittery

Vadodara: Car dealers in the city are being probed by customers about where their stockyards are or when they received the cars on sale from manufacturers. The reason is that this peak season for car sales has come close on the heels of one of the most devastating floods in the city.
The barrage of questions is not unjustified or even unexpected, given that some car showrooms or stockyards were in areas affected by floods.Dealers have to assure buyers that their cars were safe during the floods or were delivered to the stockyards after the floods. The situation is particularly grim for used car dealers, whose business has been badly hit.
When a doctor, whose car was partially submerged in the eastern part of the city and the insurance company gave him a total loss claim for his compact SUV, started looking for another car, he asked the dealer for an assurance that the car would not be one affected by water. The dealer eventually offered to call him when a fresh lot arrived and unload the cars in front of the doctor.
The doctor is still mulling over the offer and is not the only one doing so. A family from Akota Road was looking to buy a new car and wanted it delivered on the first day of Navratri. They asked the dealer to get the car from another place, one not affected by floods or a fresh piece from the company. They took delivery only after the dealer did so.
"We have had customers who have taken the address or location of our stockyard and visited it. Some made indirect inquiries about flooding. This was expected in the wake of the floods. Our stockyard was safe, and we did not face much trouble," said a representative of a dealership in Vadodara.
Used car dealers in the city say they are the worst hit as people are wary of buying cars from them. The concern of buyers is not wrong because cars declared ‘total losses' are not being scrapped.
"Earlier, people would check if a car was involved in an accident or had any major repairs done. Now they are checking for flooding. The market was already sluggish, and the present situation seems to have worsened things. Sales are down," said Avinash Soman, a dealer from Gotri.
He added that he had made a list of cars declared ‘total loss' and would check when someone came to sell a car. So far, he has a list of 140 cars.
Another used car dealer, Sunil Rajput, pointed out that besides the local market, buyers from neighbouring towns and districts have also started avoiding cars from Vadodara. "Everyone knows that many cars got submerged and want to avoid such cars," he said, adding that their sales have halved after the floods.