Mercedes-Benz launches finance offers

Mercedes-Benz India, the luxury carmaker, has launched a slew of aggressive schemes for owning or leasing a vehicle to attract buyers in a dull market.

A ‘Wishbox’ scheme includes a zero and lower down payment plan; also, an aggressive offer that allows customers to own two cars in a span of four years. With the new offers, the India arm of the German entity hopes to ‘financially empower the customer’ and ‘invoke confidence and create additional traction’. The automobile market in India is currently facing one of its worst slowdowns in two decades. An overall slowing inconsumption, exacerbatedby aliquidityissue, hasweighedon sentiment, pushing auto sales into the slow lane for a year.

Luxury cars — defined as those priced above ~2.5 million each and accounting for only 1 per cent of total passenger vehicle sales— haven’t been spared. Mercedes sales in India saw a year-on-year drop of 18.6 per cent to 6,561 units in the first six months of 2019.

“We are introducing some industry-first mobility solutions with the aim of bringing Customised financial solution with five primary features Key-to-key change 25-25-25-25 Zero down payment Star agility+ Comprehensive insurance

back the much-needed customer confidence, by offering them financial flexibility related to their car purchase,” said Martin Schwenk, managing director, Mercedes-Benz India. The Wishbox has five key features, named Key-to-key change, 25-25-25-25, Zero down payment, Star agility+, and Comprehensive insurance.

Applicable on its GLE and GLS SUVs, the Key-to-Key offer allows two upgrades at no extra cost, even as the customer always gets to own the latest product offering. The 25-25-2525 scheme is a finance offer under which the customer makes a down payment of 25 per cent of the value of the car and then three annual payments of 25 per cent each.