With the beginning of the implementation of the Rulebook on vehicle testing, at the end of September of this year, the import of used vehicles from the USA to Serbia was made possible. Although some cars are more than 30 percent cheaper compared to vehicles from the EU, considering the costs of transport, customs, freight forwarder services, vehicle control and possible modifications that need to be done, the question is how profitable their import will be.
The rulebook on vehicle testing, which more closely regulates the import of used cars from the United States of America, entered into force on June 29, 2024, but its implementation began three months later. In mid-October, the issuing of certificates for used vehicles from the USA that are not fully compliant with the regulations in Serbia began.
Milan Milojević, head of the vehicle sector at the Traffic Safety Agency, told Tanjug that every vehicle that is imported will have to meet either the requirements of the regulations on homologation or the requirements of the equivalent regulations that have been prescribed. According to him, this applies to passenger cars and light trucks, the maximum permissible mass of which is up to 3,500 kilograms.
Petar Veličković from the website Used cars for N1 explains that every used vehicle that arrives in Serbia must undergo an examination procedure by the institutions authorized by the Traffic Safety Agency, but that when it comes to imports from the USA, the difference is that cars for American the market differs in certain standards.
“First of all, it refers to the light groups (on American vehicles they are symmetrical, on ours they are not, on their vehicles the direction indicators are red…), on speedometers the speed is shown in miles, on our vehicles in kilometers per hour… Also, for safety systems in the vehicle, such as brakes or seat belts, there must be a document or proof of homologation. “In order for a vehicle to be able to receive a certificate of completed testing, which is a prerequisite for a technical inspection, i.e. registration, it is necessary to make modifications to those cars in order to meet the technical conditions prescribed at the EU level”, explains Veličković.
The procedure, as he states, is such that the owner of the vehicle will have to go to one of the authorized institutions where the control will be carried out and where he will be shown what modifications need to be done.
“Those modifications will be done in service centers, and at the moment I have no information on how much such modifications will be charged,” he says.
The interlocutor N1 points out that, although the prices of used cars in America are generally much cheaper compared to Europe, the question is which cars will be profitable to import.
“For some models, the price difference exceeds 30 percent in favor of the US market. However, the main question here is which cars will be profitable to import, because if someone, for example, wants to import a used car that costs five or six thousand euros in America, someone who is engaged in the resale of used vehicles will hardly be able to make a profit. , taking into account the costs of transport, customs, freight forwarder services, as well as vehicle control and possible modifications in order to bring such a car into line with the uniform technical conditions, which are applied in our country”, explains Veličković.
According to him, this is the reason why it is perhaps more realistic to expect the import of cars that cost several tens of thousands of euros and that belong to the so-called premium models. On the other hand, it is questionable how much interest there will be for such vehicles.
“On the Used Cars website, we conducted a survey several times in which over 6,000 website visitors participated, where we asked them how much money they were willing to spend on a used car. “Over 50 percent of the respondents stated that it is up to a maximum of 10,000 euros,” he says.
Considering that the import of used cars from the USA to Serbia is new and that there has been no such experience so far, he points out that it is necessary to wait to see whether and to what extent cars from this market can be expected to be offered in our country. .
“What we can assume at the moment is that if we have sporadic imports of cars from America, mostly more expensive models, I don’t see how they would have a greater impact on our market, because every year we import over 120,000 used cars from the territory of the EU,” says Veličković. .
Source:
N1info.rs
Photo: Autoblog.rs archive / Ford
Source: autoblog.rs
