Car scrappage voucher rush begins

Car importers have been eagerly waiting for the start of the "Rabla" car scrappage scheme, a "breath of fresh air" on a market where almost 2100 cars were sold in January, compared with more than 20,000 units only two years ago, a three billion-euro yearly business that is not showing signs of a rebound.
Over ten volume brands in Romania, which account for more than 80% of the market together, are trying to persuade Romanians to choose their brand, having earmarked budgets in the range of tens of thousands of euros for promotional purposes for the first time this year.
On the other hand, the car dealers that survived 2009, after 10% of them went bankrupt, are becoming voucher brokers, which is the newest business in Romania, put at 55 million euros, given that 60,000 junk cars will be scrapped.
"We are interested in buying vouchers, for which we pay 1,000 to 1,500 RON on the average. Therefore the client who buys a new car will pay this amount and the rest up to 3,800 RON will be the discount received," said Nicolae Sorescu, manager of Radacini Motors, Opel and Chevrolet dealer in Bucharest.
A voucher brokerage system was also put in place outside the capital city, at the Ford Plus Auto dealer in Craiova, but in this case it only consists in building "a database".
"Before the start of the scheme we built a database of all those who want to sell their junk car and implicitly their vouchers, as well as of those who want to buy a car through this scheme," said Adrian Marasescu, Plus Auto's sales manager. He added that, usually, the clients interested in the scheme wanted to buy a new car using two or even three vouchers.