Leasing Enters Mainstream

Business Times front page article seemed too quick to reach the conclusion that car leasing is now mainstream.

The paper seemed to come to this conclusion after hearing from Opel distributor Auto Germany that a grand total of 10 ( yes, you read it right, ten) Singaporeans have signed up for their leasing scheme. No other numbers were provided from other car showrooms for sign ups by Singaporeans into their leasing schemes. Is it too few to mention or none at all?

This doesn’t fit in with the conclusion drawn. “Mainstream”, to anyone who even considers the word, means that the majority of Singaporeans are now opting for this scheme in order to finance their transport needs compared to the hire purchase scheme that has dominated most new car transactions for decades. This clearly is not the case if only 10 have signed up.

Further contradicting the conclusion is the mention that Kia showrooms have always had the leasing option available – i.e.: the scheme has been long running compared to Opel’s half a month of experience in offering this option.

The customer’s choice has been very different over at Kia. The Kia spokesman hinted that it was never a majority choice for customers with his comments (starting from the pink bubble). Lexus’ commercial director echoed the same difficulties of persuading the Singaporean to accept that all the lease payments still meant no right of ownership and the loss of NCD for car insurance, which I suspect most Singaporean drivers will want to hold onto.

At best, this may be the start of a longer term trend where a small percentage of Singaporeans go for this option. But to call it mainstream right now is jumping the gun. Only time will tell.

This is a reminder of how many cars have been sold in Singapore in the two weeks just passed:

http://www.onemotoring.com.sg/1m/coe/coeDetail.html

or summarised here below:

Excluding motorcycles and goods vehicles, it is still above 1000 cars sold and put onto the road. So what we have here is 1o out of more than 1000 cars successfully put onto the road. If you consider the possibility that out of these 10, some were not sucessful in obtaining the COE, the ratio even smaller – during the same exercise, the number of bids received is well above 1000.

According to the news, we now have a mainstream majority of 10.