New Sydney Dealers

[brad]

received a letter from the new Macarthur area dealer.

Macarthur Skoda - 12 Yarmouth Place Narellan

also noticed
Peter Warren Skoda at Liverpool. That will be interesting as Peter Warren dealerships have generally worked on low prices & high turnover.

That's 9 Sydney dealerships & 9 provincial plus Canberra. Hope they are turning over some stock.

[Mysticality]

I know Moss Vale is.
I see more Octavia's than I do Micra's or Yaris!!

[Jake02]

My cousin is replacing her first-gen Forester and the current frontrunners in her choice are the Yeti 118TSI/103TDI and the Subaru XV 2.0i-S, only in a manual. We've been dealing with George at Trivett Skoda in Parramatta and found him to be very professional and not at all pushy, what I look for in a salesman. There's a white Yeti 103TDI manual at Trivett Blacktown and it's $37k with off-road and sat-nav and he had no problems in getting that if my cousin wanted to buy it, as well as test driving any Skoda in the showroom. It was also pleasing to see a fair amount of customers in the showroom, with a young couple signing onto a Fabia Monte Carlo while we were there.

Other manufacturers we've been looking at have been less than impressive. Denlo Subaru was alright (as was the XV, it was a real surprise at how good it is), but Denlo Volkswagen was appalling! They had two Tiguans on the floor, both sold, so we couldn't look at them and the manager was really trying to push the 2.8% finance offer, even though my cousin wants to buy with no finance, so we didn't even look at the Tiguan, not that I particularly care. West End Mazda were ok, but the CX-5 was not as it was quite sluggish and even the Yeti 77TSI felt more sprightly than the CX-5 petrol; she wants a manual so the diesel is out of the picture.

A good Skoda dealer in a sea of bad other dealers (the Church St strip) is a great thing in my opinion.

[sillyboy]

Hi Jake02, couldn't agreed more with your last sentence, we have similar situation around upper northshore, a bad hornsby VW and a good and friendly Pennant hills skoda, so much love for the skoda. Sales person in Optus puts more effort to sell their phone than hornsby VW sell their car.

[Jake02]

Sales person in Optus puts more effort to sell their phone than hornsby VW sell their car.

Oh really? I actually know the owner of the Hornsby VW dealer so I'll pass that on, I'm sure he'd be happy to take on any criticism.

[2009fsi]

My sister so impressed with my Skoda. a superb, she's bought an Octavia from the new Peter Warren dealership. Skoda's lack of stock in Australia is a big sales limiter in my view. She is like me, they either have something in stock which I'll buy, or I'll go to the other dago, as the saying goes. Skoda did not have a TDI DSG Occy in NSW, so the car is being brought down from Nambour Qld. That has taken a month + plus 3 days to add her extras spec. Unbelieveably, that was the only one available in Australia. Salesman told me they didn't sell a Skoda for over a week in April: Only rusted on lovers are prepared to wait for 'their ship to come in'. I've met several people who have been turned off by there not being a decent pool of available Skoda stock.
I've bought a spare 18" & mudflaps from PW Skoda spares. Prices were good, but on both occassions, it took 2 business days from order to pickup. Pretty clear PW keeps no spares for Skoda & relies on its proximity to the VW group warehouse in Chullora to get in, on-demand.

[Inego]

It is a conundrum - the Aussie market is largely about buying from stock rather than order and extended delivery. I only went back to look at Skoda when Subaru quoted me a minimum 2-3 month wait on what I wanted, and Skoda had a demo that was mostly what I was after. If the wait on the Skoda was the same or longer, I would have gone back to Subaru, as that was what I was trading.

The UK market where Skoda is booming may be all about order and delivery, but it doesn't work where the delivery is a minimum month longer to Australia.....

[zei20t]

i drive past northshore skoda and their numbers are dwindling. there were easily 6-8 new cars out front, today only 3. i guess they are waiting on stock delivery.

[2009fsi]

Went over to Liverpool with sister to check on delivery of her Occy. A VW/Skoda salesman seemed quite frustrated at not having stock to sell. As he said, in Australia, people decide to buy a new car & want to get on with it. His problem is very limited cars in stock. Quote: "Selling cars has always been about getting the customers bum in their drivers seat." "It is a real handicap not having stock. He's got more Superbs than anything else, but all wagons & all FWD only. He thinks they could probably sell heaps of 103TDI DSG 4x4, but they've never had one in stock. "Aussies don't really want FWD family size cars particularly if towing, but a 4x4 I can sell even thought it effectively runs FWD most of the time." The other saleable car he reckons was the roomy 4x4 103TDI DSG Scout but it's bitten the dust. "Most people don't really want all terrain 4WDs, they want the room for the kids."
We had an interesting discussion about VW group marketing & both find it confusing. Why do they persist with this big car label for Superb, when the external dimensions are smaller than competitors' medium size cars? VW Group models seem to compete against one another as much as anything.
A final comment from made me laugh "It would help if all the silver Occys & Superbs didn't look so much like the front of a 2000 model Pulsars,in a carpark!"
I hadn't noticed that until then, but now it is obvious everytime I go into a carpark.
Another thing I noticed the other day is the signage on the HQ at Chullora. It started out with just a big Skoda emblem on it & seemed to be "Skoda". That's been changed now to large "VW Group signage, with a smaller Skoda sub logo. I hope that doesn't signal a change of direction within the group, towards Skoda.