Suzuki Singapore’s auction sale happens April 25 – we tell you how it works and if it’s worth your time/dollars

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SINGAPORE
Suzuki Singapore has announced its version of an online sale, this time with a slightly different twist.

Dubbed the ‘Suzuki Super Auction’, prospective buyers will logon via this link (it’s not live yet) and you can pre-register for a reminder at this URL. The sale will run from 0001h April 25, 2020 to 2359h April 29.

Suzuki says buyers simply need to choose the model they want, the colour, and a enter a bid price.

Once that’s done you need to put down the standard S$500 deposit for the car, and Suzuki will buzz you once the auction is over to relay the results by May 2, 2020. If your bid is unsuccessful, your deposit is refunded. If not, you proceed to the financing process and final paperwork etc, and collect it after the circuit breaker ends.

Suzuki’s current lineup, the Swift, the Vitara SUV and the Jimny off-road SUV, are available at the sale.

Time for some CarBuyer analysis here, and the big question is: Does this buying format have value, or is it a waste of time?

Our advice would to do as you would on eBay or Carousell – don’t waste everyone’s time by submitting an unnaturally low bid, it’ll just be ignored. If recent flash sales are taken as a benchmark (more detail below), something around S$10k below list price would work.

The draw of the auction format for buyers is that they might be able to snag a car at a one-off extra-low price. That is possible in say, a repo car auction, and if the rest of the audience is sufficiently unaware of the value of something.

That probably won’t happen here, but it doesn’t mean you won’t get a discount. Given the current extraordinary circumstances, car dealers want to build up a bank of orders to get the revenue flowing once the circuit breaker ends – see current oil prices for an extreme example of what happens when you let stock accumulate.

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Watch our video review, or read our written one, to find out why the Suzuki Jimny is still one-of-a-kind after nearly 50 years of existence

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl_3c9uDAXo[/embedyt]

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And as we’ve seen in the past two weeks, car retailers have been shifting their focus online to reach people with flash sales and contactless deposit-making – Kia offered up to S$16k off its popular Cerato in its recent flash sale, and Toyota is currently having a flash sale, with S$3k to S$7k off its models, that runs until Friday, April 24.

So dealers are keen to discount cars and move them off the lot – but at what price? The true purpose of an auction system is not to ‘lelong’ things, but to best determine their current ‘I’d actually buy it at this price’ value as dictated by the audience.

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We imagine that as along as you didn’t put up a ‘troll bid’ (the S$500 deposit prevents that) and if your bid doesn’t go through, Suzuki might say, “Ok, you’re willing to pay X for a Swift – why don’t we meet in the middle?”

And if the concept of ‘shopping is entertainment’ also applies here, it mimics the highs and lows of bidding for your own Certificate of Entitlement (COE), since COEs are auctioned every month. Who needs MBS (not that you can go)? But the still wins when it comes to car buying.

Before CB measures kicked in, Suzuki also launched its ‘Suzuki T-DAH! (Suzuki Test Drive at Home)’ concierge drive service, where the car and sales consultant come to a place of your choosing so you can test drive without heading to the showroom. Suzuki says the service will resume on June 1, 2020.