Renault may have needed a little goading in the form of unfavourable comparisons in Malcolm Kinsey’s annual reports on spares pricing, but the French company has reacted by reducing prices and improving availability of spares considerably.
Following years of bad results for Renault, the Kinsey Report released in October last year scored the Renault Clio — the only Renault included in the survey — as the best performer in the “B” segment of the market. Kinsey rooted out prices on a standard basket of spares for seven cars in this category, pitting the Renault against its peers from Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Honda and Kio, and then calculated the cost of the spares as a percentage of the initial cost of the vehicle.
At R26Â 979 for an assortment of parts ranging from air filters and windscreen wiper blades to clutch plates, fenders and radiators, the Renault Clio 1.6 Dynamique’s spares basket cost 19,27% of the car’s selling price. “The Renault Clio’s prices have improved dramatically,” says Kinsey in his report. “Body-parts prices have been halved since last year. This has put them in top spot in the percentage race and third overall as far as the cost of the parts basket is concerned — up from last place in this category in 2004.”
But one swallow doesn’t make a summer. What about the rest of the Renault range?
MD Roland Bouchara says the publication of the 2005 report prompted his company to take a long, hard look at its parts price positioning. It cut prices where it could, and then commissioned Kinsey to conduct a public, warts-and-all evaluation of spares prices for its full range of vehicles early this year. Models covered included the Clio, Megane, Scenic, Modus, Espace, Trafic and Kangoo, and the Renault brand came out smelling of roses.
“Renault South Africa has concentrated its efforts and resources to ensure that our cars represent a value-for-money ownership proposition, not just in terms of the retail purchase price, but also in the longer term,” says Bouchara. Translated into plain English, that means Renault’s sales were being badly hurt by its reputation for expensive spares and poor parts availability.
Kinsey’s Renault survey bears out the company’s claims. All of the models the Durban researcher and motoring journalist selected for comparison with their opposition had parts baskets priced below the average for the sector, some by a considerable margin.
The Megane II 1.6 Dynamique, for instance — when compared with the Toyota Corolla 160i, Peugeot’s 307 1.6 Xline, BMW’s 116, the VW Jetta 1.6 STD, the Ford Focus 1.6 Si, Nissan’s Almera 160, and the Mazda3 1.6 Sport — came out looking pretty good. The list of service items, mechanical parts and accident repair items for the Renault costed out at R29Â 998, with the average for the rest being R33Â 798. Only the Toyota Corolla (R25Â 789) and the Ford Focus (R25Â 802) were cheaper.
Bouchara says that Renault also increased the number of individual parts held in stock by 30% in 2005, and stock levels by 150%. Much of that must be attributed to the fact that the total pool of Renault products on South African roads grew from less than 40Â 000 cars in 2003 to slightly more than 60Â 000 in 2005. Parts turnover in this country grew from R100-million in 2003 to about R180-million two years later, and is anticipated to reach R260-million this year.
Drop me a line on [email protected] if you’re a Renault owner and let me know your opinions on spares pricing and availability in 2006.
The full Kinsey Report on car spares pricing is available at www.kinsey.valueweb.co.za