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Business Editor
The country sold only 7 500 new vehicle units last year against 66 000 gray imports as affordability remains the main consideration in purchasing in the current economic environment.
Nissan Zimbabwe group marketing manager Admire Ndumo told the Association of Mine Managers of Zimbabwe meeting held in Nyanga last Friday that the big four car dealerships, Nissan, Toyota, Ford and General Motors in the country had sold 2 945 units or 40 percent.

Nissan has the bigger share of that market at 21,4 percent followed by Toyota at 20,7 percent.
Economists say the disparity of new units versus pre-owned is likely to widen as gray imports have positive cross elasticity of demand and are therefore substitutes to low-level volume brands.

Motor industry specialist Solomon Makwati told The Herald Business that most dealerships have been affected by the downturn in the economy.
“Dealerships have been most affected by the influx of gray imports. And to stem that most have engaged in strenuous marketing of back up services to convince people to buy entry level (volume brand) brand new cars than going for gray imports that do not have back-up service and warranties.

The influx of gray imports has also affected car assemblers such as Quest Motors and Willowvale. In 1997, the market had 25 000 new cars of which 18 000 were assembled locally.

IDC general manager Mr Mike Ndzudzo recently said the new car business requires long term customer funding like hire purchase and lease hire.
These were previously given by private financial institutions like UDC and Scotfin to corporate and high net worth individuals, who after a period of five years, then downloaded these as own local second hand supply to the market as cash business.

Government is set to complete the motor industry policy soon that will help in the assembling, importation and value addition of the motor vehicles in the country.