Though the country’s income per capital is at middle level, some Vietnamese are willing to spend big money for super and luxury cars, making the market to be among some Southeast Asia’s biggest buyers of such kind of cars.
Vietnamese bought 8,670 super and luxury cars worth up to US$877 million last year
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The number of luxury cars priced at more than VND2 billion each even reached 21,902 last year, according to data from Vibiz.vn.
According to Mercedes Benz Vietnam, 150 Maybachs were delivered to Vietnamese buyers in 2017. The sales of Maybach in Vietnam are the highest in Southeast Asia.
This is a luxury model of Mercedes-Benz with three versions in distribution in Vietnam, including Maybach S 400 priced at VND6.899 billion, Maybach S 500 VND10.999 billion and Maybach S 600 VND14.169 billion.
When launching Maybach S 600 into the market in January 2015, Mercedes Benz then hoped it could sell 10 products a year. However, to its surprise, over 50 products were sold in the year.
The figure was over 100 in 2016, and Vietnam remained the biggest buyer of Maybachs in 2017, leaving Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore far behind. It is estimated that over 300 Maybachs are rolling on Vietnam’s streets.
The other luxury models also had very good sales. Over 500 S-Class products, priced at VND4-10 billion, were sold in 2017.
However, the highest growth rate belonged to mid-end luxury models, priced at VND1.5-3 billion. A record number of 2,500 GLCs priced at VND1.939-2.209 billion was sold in 2017, placing GLC as one of the 15 best sellers in the market.
The other luxury models, which were sold very well in 2017, included BMW’s Seri 3 and Seri 5, Audi’s A4 and Q5 and Lexus’ ES 250 and NX 200T.
Car dealers in Vietnam say there is a switch in consumption from common products to mid-end products. A survey by Mercedes Benz found that car buyers tend to be younger. In 2014, the average age of car buyers was 42, while it was 39 in 2016 and 38 in 2017.
According to the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA), a total of 272,750 automobile units were sold in 2017, down 10 percent yearly.
Last month alone, up to 21,123 vehicles were sold in the domestic market, VAMA reported. Of the total, the sales of tourist vehicles reached 13,549, up 5 percent, while the sales of commercial vehicles decreased 8 percent to 6,375 units and the sales of specialized vehicles also fell 8 percent to 1,217 units as compared with the previous month.
Notably, the domestically-assembled cars segment saw a fall of 5 percent in sales to 17,910 vehicles. On the contrary, 3,213 vehicles were imported, up 37 percent month-on-month.
During the January-April period, total automobile sales were 80,681 units, a decrease of 7 percent year-on-year. The sales of tourist vehicles increased 2 percent, while that of commercial and specialized cars fell 18 percent and 36 percent, respectively.
The sales of domestically-assembled cars edged up 8 percent against a decrease of 47 percent in the sales of imported cars.
Experts said consumers are still expecting cheaper cars with preferential import taxes.
However, since the first batch of about 2,000 cars imported by Honda Vietnam with import tax of zero percent, there were no more carmakers allowed to import vehicles over the past three months.
