BMW: Slow car sales “temporary phenomenon”

That’s the view of new BMW Australia chief executive Vikram Pawah, who is confident a tide of new metal can convince cautious buyers to dig deep and take home a luxury car.

The Australian car industry is set to close lower than the previous year as falling house prices, a volatile sharemarket and lending reforms halt record sales. 

Luxury brands have been hit harder than most, but BMW plans to buck the trend with a variety of new models including next-gen replacements for its bread-and-butter 3-Series and X5, along with halo machines in a Z4 sports car and 8-Series grand tourer, and an all-new X7 large SUV.

“I see a lot of opportunity for us,” Pawah says. 

“Although yes, one can debate ‘is this the right time for launching new models' when the industry is going through kind of a soft phase, given what… the consumer sentiment is right now.”

Pawah says industry observers need to look at falling sales with a wide-angle lens, taking into context years of extraordinary sales growth which may not be sustainable in the long term.

“A downturn is when people stop buying cars,” he says.

“If people just defer replacing their car, I call it a temporary phenomenon. 

“There might be a temporary phenomenon that might be causing [slow sales] - housing prices, election timing, whatever, might be causing a little bit of deferment of purchase from customers. 

“But that doesn’t mean they’re still not interested in new products. New products beat that trend all the time.”

Asserting that BMW will have “the freshest portfolio in the industry”, Pawah is convinced BMW is ready to handle further softening of new car sales in the short term.

“I won’t get panicked,” he says.

“Especially as brand BMW I won’t get panicked at all, because [with] the kind of products we are launching I’m sure we can beat the trend for what is going to happen in the industry."