996FourEss:
I don’t understand how they need to offer such a big incentive to buy this, that is a problem at some point for MB
According to the information I received from an AMG guy, all cars available at official Mercedes dealerships (so called "factory dealerships") need to be sold within 12 months (actually 12 months minus a day), otherwise they are not considered to be new cars anymore according to German laws.
All those 16(?), my AMG guy told me there were 20 cars, my sales guy said 16, SL63 sold with 26% discount and that amazing lease offer were falling under that category. Mostly unsold cars, either ordered by the dealerships or customer cars which weren't picked up for whatever reasons.
Almost all of these cars had a "flaw", they either had the performance seats (no massage and cooling function) or weird colors/color combos, options. Some cars were without lift.
The weirdest car I encountered (I try to find the pic) had performance seats with that Manufaktur diamond stitching. Pretty weird but looking quite interesting. Car was fully loaded, incl. ceramic brakes but had those ugly "aerodynamic" rims, which are basically considered to be standard wheels. So weird.
Here is a screenshot of the cheapest offer during that event.
117k EUR excl. tax (139k EUR incl. 19% VAT for a car worth slightly over 200k EUR). Only problem with this car: No Burmester sound system, not even the smaller one. Crap.
Is Mercedes going to offer more offers like the one I encountered? Very unlikely. The reason is simple: They switched to the "agency sales model" in July 2023 and dealers were aware of it. Not many cars are left at dealerships because dealerships didn't get any more stock. Dealerships have basically become brokers for Mercedes Online sales.
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RC (Germany) - Rennteam Editor Lamborghini Huracan Performante (2019), BMW Z4 M40i (2022), Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk (2019 EU)