Luxury cars to get cheaper as year ends

Manufacturers of luxury cars are all set to slash prices to boost their sales during the festive season.

The season of heavy discounts is back for the customers of luxury cars. With different manufacturers like Mercedes, Audi and BMW offering heavy discounts in order to improve their annual performance, luxury car market is hoping to do better as compared to other segments. In an otherwise slow year for the automobile industry, these manufacturers are offerings discounts up to Rs. 10 lakhs to make ends meet.

The Mercedes-Benz E Class now comes with a discount of Rs 5 lakhs on some variants whereas the BMW X1 will arrive with similar kind of benefits. The bestseller of the BMW family – 5 series – now costs Rs. 7 lakhs cheaper and the 7 series will come with a slightly more discount of Rs. 10 lakhs.

The luxury car market has already crossed its last year’s numbers as two German manufacturers, Audi and Mercedes-Benz have been doing well this year, thanks to the new launches from both these carmakers. Audi had sold more than 10,000 cars by November end plans to sell another 1,000 before the year ends. Mercedes-Benz is expected to sell a little over 11,000 cars before the year ends. It had sold 9,0003 cars in 2013.

Automobile experts believe that this December should be decisive for luxury car segment due to the discounts. And if government decides to withdraw excise duty, as many think it will, the luxury car market will be the worst hit. Tata owned Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo cars combined together are expected to sell a total of 35,000 cars in 2014.