KARACHI: Amid restrictions on auto financing, high registration charges and soaring prices, the car delivery waiting period of various locally assembled vehicles has touched up to nine months if a buyer books the four-wheeler today.

New models of the Honda Civic were launched on Feb 4 through a media campaign with a partial booking amount of Rs1.2 million while the tentative prices of the three models range between Rs5.099m and Rs6.149m.

Market sources said Honda Atlas Cars Ltd (HACL) will now be rolling out only Honda Civic Turbo 1,500cc versions instead of 1,800cc sedans. However, the company has not yet officially shared the Honda Civic’s actual picture.

According to Shabbir Alibhai of Honda Drive In and Honda Quadideen, the new Honda Civic is comparable to any C-Class Mercedes, Audi or a BMW of the same specifications.

Due to heavy demand, delivery time of new Honda Civic available in three variants varies from four to eight months.

Dealers charging ‘premiums’ for early deliveries

The new models of Honda City, launched in August 2021, now carry a waiting period of three to four months while the buyers will get the key of BR-V in two to three months at the showroom.

In Toyota, the waiting time for the buyers in Toyota Corolla and SUV models hovers between four and five months while Yaris is being delivered in two months.

On-money on Yaris is negligible while Corolla and Grande models carry a “premium” of around Rs300,000.

Lucky Motor Corporation (LMC) has already suspended booking of Picanto automatic from December 2021, while the company had closed down bookings for the manual model from Feb 2 due to a semiconductor chip shortage.

However, the delivery commitment for Picanto is July followed by April/May for Sportage models. The delivery time for Stonic two models is February and June, while Sorento and Carnival are readily available.

A KIA dealer said Sportage is still in high demand despite various issues like high prices, massive registration charges and State Bank’s curbs on auto financing.

Sources said that on-money on Sportage is Rs40,000-50,000 while Stonic carries Rs150,000 followed by Rs200,000 on Picanto automatic.

However, dealers of Toyota and Honda, on condition of anonymity, said that their showrooms have been facing a big slowdown from the banks offering auto loans. This is due to massive price increase in vehicles after the imposition of Federal Excise Duty (FED), heavy registration charges on over 1,000cc vehicles and financing curbs imposed by the State Bank in the last quarter of 2021.

The booking of all Cultus variants has been discontinued for the last four months while Alto 660cc is going on. The on-money on Cultus automatic and ABS models is Rs300,000 and Rs325,000, respectively.

Alto is being delivered in three to four months. Alto’s manual and automatic models carry Rs200,000 and Rs300,000 on-money while the VX model’s delivery time is five months. The premium on WagonR model is charged at Rs80,000.

Changan Alsvin automatic having a tag price of Rs2.944m is being delivered in four months while the sunroof model’s delivery time is 40 days.

However, to check the menace of on-money high taxes for different engine power capacities have been fixed on registration where the booking was made by Person A and registration was made in the name of Person B.

Compulsory payment of Kibor plus 3pc interest rate by the manufacturers had been fixed on delivery beyond 60 days on initial deposited payment.

Sources in the Engineering Development Board (EDB) said that the auto assemblers had paid over Rs3 billion to the customers on late deliveries from 2016 to June 2021.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2022