Liberty Motors Ltd (利奔國際汽車), the distributor of Audi cars in Taiwan, is offering discounts of between 5.9 percent and 14.1 percent to clear up its inventory before German automaker Audi AG sets up its own sales company here in February.
The company said that Audi cars manufactured between the second half of 2006 and the first half of last year would be discounted by as much as 14.1 percent, while newer cars would have a lower discount of 5.9 percent to 10.1 percent.
Ingolstadt-based Audi is upbeat about potential growth in the local vehicle market and aims to more than double its sales figures in Taiwan by 2015. Approximately 1,900 Audi cars were sold in Taiwan last year, the company’s Web site showed.
Audi said it was investing heavily in building a sales and service network in Taiwan with 11 dealers, including three in Taipei, planning to start operations over the next few years.
“Asia and Eastern Europe are the growth drivers in our business, and we are going to keep our foot on the gas,” Peter Schwarzenbauer, a member of the company’s marketing board, said in a company statement.
Audi said sales soared in the first seven months of the year, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, with 90,924 new cars sold, up 18.1 percent year-on-year, the statement said, adding that the company sold 69,912 new vehicles at the same time in China and Hong Kong, a 20.4 percent increase from a year ago.
Swire Group Taiwan (台灣太古集團), the parent company of Liberty Motors, imports and distributes different vehicle brands, including Audi, Volkswagen, Volvo and Kia. The firm sold more than 14,000 new cars in 2005, which accounted for 23 percent of the total number of cars imported into Taiwan, the Chinese-language Apple Daily reported yesterday.
Swire Group Taiwan is the nation’s largest distributor of imported cars.
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