Hi all,

just moved to Switzerland and looking to buy a car and have a question.
I'm seeing a lot of new cars at a deep discount (70k new from dealer but selling for 50k) from various dealers on autoscout.

An example of this .

What's the catch? Is it just a trick to get you to the dealership?

Thanks in advance.

it's parallel import. no 100k km/10 years free service.
and of course not assembled on the special Swiss production line

Can't be sure of your particular example, but it's quite common for small dealers to import 'new' cars from Germany, so what you end up with, while perfectly legal, may not have the benefit of a proper manufacturer's warranty, may be a non-Swiss specification, and may even be last year's model that's been sitting unsold in a German dealership or a storage facility.

Swiss price signs.

- normal European price - 33% off:



- extra special Swiss model price - 33% more:

They all have a "proper manufacturers" warranty !
Usually imported cars benefit from 2 years, whilst "Swiss" cars are 3 years or upto XX km (usually 100k km)

The spec may change a little, for examply type of tyres fitted, standard equipment level.

A lot of cars irrespective whether they are Swiss or otherwise spend time sitting around in storage facilities....

Service pack for a new car is "worth" around 3-6k - depending on the make/model. Also add in an extra year's warranty (1-2k) - more years if you are looking at a Volvo.

A lot of import dealers also offer really really poor trade in values.

It is always worth comparing like for like

Well I did say 'may'. But yes, perhaps would have been more accurate to say 'same as an official Swiss model' instead of 'proper'.

True. But you don't normally get a discontinued model/spec from an official main dealer registered as new, which is what can happen in these situations, so you end up with a discrepancy between the model year and the registration date, which would seriously affect future resale values.

We looked at this when we bought an Audi TT a few years ago. Grey imports were being offered as 'new', even though they used an engine which had been superceded (similar max power output, but much better delivery lower in the rev range). We ended up getting a Swiss ex-demo model in the same spec as these from an official dealer, six months and 20k km old, for much less than the grey imports, and it included a 'free servicing' package which had been extended by a year an 10k km.

So as Ken says, it's always worth comparing like for like, as sometimes the cheaper 'new' car may not be quite the bargain you think it is.

Oh, and an easy to fit chip from racechip.de smoothed out the power delivery as well as upping the max, so the disadvantage was very small.

It's quite probable that at the very least this is last year's model.

I got my car almost 1/2 off sticker price when I bought it. It was a 2012 model bought in 2013. , it was not an import.

Probably an import as the Swiss don't have any factories building cars

she's driving a Sbarro

From the bigger places it's unlikely that the cars are 'old models' as they import so many at a time they won't be able to source the number they need from dealers sitting on stock. Also, without any access to cheap stocking finance from the manufacturer they won't want to be holding stock for long so they will ensure it turns fast.

Some manufacturers put a sticker with build date on it under the bonnet (BMW and Mini do I know) and with others you can decode the VIN to identify the actual build date.

You can get a car which has sat for ages from a Swiss dealer too, I bought one which had sat un-registered for 12 months (I knew this at the time) and some of that batch were 15 months old when sold.

Some dealers will tell you the car is worth less when you trade it in, but in reality that isn't true and most will happily sell an import at full Swiss retail price

In our case, an instruction manual in Dutch.

No problem with getting main dealers here to service.

We got a decent trade in too.

Buying an import here (rather than doing it yourself) means you're still supporting Swiss businesses.

Or a Sauber.

Tom

Or a Rinspeed

Or a Montiverdi

So FMF is wrong?

That can't be

Nah, FF isn't wrong, just "alternative facts" i guess

Fake news?

or a Lizard Project One

If you want to sell it there's a proportionate cut, isn't there?

For instance Swiss list price new 50k, value after 5 years is 20k, say. Grey import costs 35k new so resale value is perhaps 14k after 5 years.

Of course if you use the car until it dies this kind of cut is of no effet, and even with the cut you still save a significant amount.