The FINANCIAL — Flooded streets, tree-toppling winds, flying debris, falling trees, littered roads and driveways, closed undergrounds and airports is only part of an endless list of problems caused by Hurricane Irene in the United States.
It was expected that Hurricane Irene could cause serious problems to auto importers but it didn’t, dealers in Georgia said.
Excluding Europe and Japan, the United States is one of the countries from where Georgian auto dealership companies import cars. American cars occupy almost 25 % of the imported cars in Georgia.
As the directors of auto dealership companies in Georgia say: “Cars, which were parked in America during the storm, haven’t been damaged. They will arrive in Georgia soon.”
“Our containers are already on their way. Their transportation had been launched before the storm started”, said Mikheil Davidov, the manager of Gemi.ge. The company transfers the cars from America and Japan to Georgia. “If the storm lasted longer, it would have prevented the transportation of the cars, of course. Our consumers have no problem with waiting until their cars arrive as they understand it isn’t company’s fault,” he said.
“The company Autoshop.ge has a service in which consumers can choose a car, order and buy it from any region in the United States. We import cars from different cities of America, but the hurricane didn’t has much of an effect on our ordered cars transportation,” said Evgeni Barnabishvili, the director of Autoshop.ge.
The director of auto-car auction company Mycar.ge, Soso Japaridze, confirmed that the bad weather didn’t stop, but postponed, the process of transportation. He expects another danger – the reduction of orders of American cars. “For example, in the case of Japan, after its earthquake the orders on Japanese cars were significantly reduced. For the company, the main priority is to ensure the consumers aren’t frightened and therefore not reduce their orders. We will see if the hurricane has had an effect on new orders after approximately a month. It won’t bring a big loss to a company if the cars arrive 10 days late or early. Nowadays, 20 cars are ordered and 2 months are necessary for their transportation. I talked to my partners in America and I was told all the cars are OK and none of them were damaged by the hurricane,” said Japaridze.
Six cars ordered by Lucky Group+ are already on their way. Irakli Fruidze, the auto expert of Lucky Group+, isn’t worried about the transportation of the imported cars. He shared his colleagues’ opinion about the reduction of the orders. “The consumers will lose confidence and won’t order as many cars as before. There was a time that the demand on Japanese cars was lower, because of the earthquake and radiation but not for long as consumers trust Japanese cars more than American ones. This is because the Japanese make detailed descriptions of their cars and give this information openly to the customer,” said Fruidze.
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