The market in Croatia is too small to support dealerships and service networks.
How to buy and service some of the most expensive cars in the world? If you are one of the lucky ones who can afford to pay a few million kuna or euro for a car, you probably wonder where you can buy and service them. If you are not so lucky, at least it is nice to dream, reports Večernji List on May 26, 2018.
For expensive cars such as Bugatti, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bentley or Aston Martin, there are no sales representatives in Croatia, no dealerships and service networks, which means that the buyers of the most prestigious cars have to go abroad. For a short while, there was an official Aston Martin representative for the region in Zagreb, but the showroom was soon closed due to weak interest.
For those Croatians who want to buy a new Lamborghini, Bugatti or Bentley, there is no other option than to reverse the footsteps of Ferdinand Budicki, who in 1901 drove the first car from Vienna to Zagreb, since the nearest showroom of the three most luxurious and most expensive Volkswagen brands is located in the Austrian capital.
The head of the branch in Vienna is Sanjin Arkus, a Croat born in Sarajevo who moved to Austria before the war. “We have a lot of customers from Croatia. Last year, we sold four Bentleys to Croatian buyers for a price of about 300,000 euro each and one Lamborghini Aventador for around 500,000 euro. We have not yet sold any Bugattis to Croatia, but that is not surprising since the price is at least 4.2 million euro. We have six offices: Vienna, Prague, Bucharest, Warsaw, Katowice and the one in Budapest will open soon. We would need to sell between 25 to 30 cars a year for us to be profitable to open an office in Zagreb,” said Arkus.
However, Vienna is not far away. “With such luxurious cars, our service is completely different. We offer our buyers to come and take their car to a garage for service. We arrive with a truck, load the car, and nobody can see it until it is returned. For example, if a regular service for Lamborghini, with a service interval of 15,000 kilometres, is between 3,000 and 3,500 euro, the transport costs of several hundred euro is not much for the owner. Also, many owners use the service for a nice extended weekend in Vienna,” says Arkus. In extraordinary situations, car mechanics called “flying doctors” are sent to the customer’s home to fix the car there. “For example, our two mechanics recently went by plane to Albania. They were very pleased with the job done, and there was no problem with the tools. The laptop is the most important tool today,” explains Arkus.
Such expensive vehicles are not produced in advance, so customers have to wait sometimes more than a year for their car to arrive. “We rely on a ‘pull strategy’ that includes limiting the quantity and increasing demand for our vehicles,” says Arkus.
Next year, the hybrid Bentley Bentayga will arrive on the market. Due to lower CO2 emissions, it will have a significantly lower price. For example, in Austria, the price will be reduced from about 300,000 euro to 200,000 euro due to lower environmental taxes.
Bentley Wien regularly brings its best buyers to Croatia, to the Rovinj Beach Polo Cup, an exclusive polo tournament for the elite. This year, the competition will take place from 8 to 10 June. “Bentley has its team in the tournament, and we will bring our top 30 buyers, mostly from Germany and Austria. This is also great for Croatian tourism so that guests who regularly visit world-famous destinations can see what Croatia has to offer,” concludes Arkus.
Translated from Večernji List (reported by Mladen Milčić).
