Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

The mar­ket for for­eign used ve­hi­cles in Trinidad and To­ba­go is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing re­newed com­mer­cial mo­men­tum, with strong de­mand emerg­ing for six- and eight-year-old mod­els, ac­cord­ing to in­dus­try stake­hold­ers.

De­ice Ramd­han, Op­er­a­tions Di­rec­tor at D&D Au­to in Freeport, Cen­tral Trinidad, says the seg­ment is ex­pand­ing rapid­ly due to its af­ford­abil­i­ty and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to a broad­er cross-sec­tion of con­sumers.

She made the com­ments dur­ing the com­pa­ny’s an­nu­al sales ex­hi­bi­tion on Sat­ur­day, which at­tract­ed hun­dreds of prospec­tive buy­ers.

Ramd­han not­ed that the ap­peal of these ve­hi­cles lies in their low­er ac­qui­si­tion costs and favourable fi­nanc­ing struc­tures.

Con­sumers are in­creas­ing­ly able to se­cure loans with re­duced in­stal­ments over short­er re­pay­ment pe­ri­ods, ef­fec­tive­ly widen­ing mar­ket par­tic­i­pa­tion across var­i­ous in­come groups, she not­ed.

“The de­mand for six- and eight-year-old ve­hi­cles re­mains con­sis­tent­ly high be­cause they of­fer a more eco­nom­i­cal op­tion,” Ramd­han ex­plained.

“This al­lows cus­tomers to qual­i­fy more eas­i­ly for fi­nanc­ing, open­ing the mar­ket to a wider de­mo­graph­ic with­in the work­force.”

In ad­di­tion to tra­di­tion­al gaso­line-pow­ered ve­hi­cles, deal­ers are now of­fer­ing a di­ver­si­fied in­ven­to­ry that in­cludes three-year-old hy­brid mod­els, elec­tric ve­hi­cles and new units.

This ex­pand­ed prod­uct mix is help­ing deal­er­ships re­main com­pet­i­tive while meet­ing evolv­ing con­sumer pref­er­ences, Ramd­han said.

She said prices for six- and eight-year-old ve­hi­cles cur­rent­ly range from ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$65,000 to $150,000, de­pend­ing on fac­tors such as reg­is­tra­tion sta­tus and mod­el type.

Pop­u­lar mod­els with­in this pric­ing seg­ment in­clude the Nis­san AD Wag­on, Nis­san Note, Nis­san Blue­bird Syl­phy, Maz­da Ax­ela, Nis­san X-Trail and Sub­aru Im­preza.

En­try-lev­el op­tions be­low $100,000 are typ­i­cal­ly lim­it­ed to small­er or old­er mod­els, while high­er-end ve­hi­cles com­mand prices above this thresh­old.

From a com­mer­cial stand­point, Ramd­han the sec­tor is char­ac­terised by a di­verse cus­tomer base, rang­ing from young first-time buy­ers to old­er, more es­tab­lished con­sumers.

Fi­nanc­ing meth­ods vary, with pur­chas­es fund­ed ei­ther through per­son­al sav­ings or in­sti­tu­tion­al cred­it.

De­spite some con­cerns re­gard­ing age­ing tech­nol­o­gy in old­er ve­hi­cles, Ramd­han em­pha­sised that con­sumer con­fi­dence can be main­tained through due dili­gence. She ad­vised buy­ers to en­gage rep­utable deal­ers, se­cure war­ran­ty cov­er­age and con­duct in­de­pen­dent me­chan­i­cal in­spec­tions pri­or to pur­chase.

In­dus­try par­tic­i­pants al­so point to the avail­abil­i­ty of spare parts as a key ad­van­tage sup­port­ing the longevi­ty and cost-ef­fi­cien­cy of these ve­hi­cles, fur­ther re­in­forc­ing their val­ue propo­si­tion in the lo­cal au­to­mo­tive mar­ket.