Supermarket offers discount cars

ONE of Germany’s leading discount supermarket chains has started selling cars on its website, offering discounts of more than 25 per cent on two popular German cars.

Aldi rival Lidl – one of Europe’s biggest chains with 7000 stores and ambitions to expand to Australia – is offering any online buyer in the EU a three-door 1.0-litre Opel Corsa for €10,570 ($A20,840), which it claims is €3940 ($A7770) cheaper than an similarly equipped Corsa in Germany – a saving of 27.1 per cent.

Buyers wanting something larger and more highly specified can select a five-door 1.4-litre Volkswagen Cross Polo for €13,645 ($A26,900), a saving of €4775 ($A9410) or 25.9 per cent in Germany.

Lidl spokesperson Petra Trabert told Associated Press the company was launching the car sales in conjunction with German car distributor ATG-Automobile.

“Lidl and ATG-Automobile work with the same target audience,” said Ms Trabert. “We are geared toward the customer who seeks quality in conjunction with a favourable price.” However, Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, the director of the Center for Automotive Research in Gelsenkirchen, said previous efforts to sell cars online and through supermarkets had faltered.



“I think it will be very difficult for Lidl,” Mr Dudenhoeffer predicted.

“People don’t want to buy high-value products from a discount grocery store. Germans like to go to the dealership.” Mr Dudenhoeffer said Quelle, a German online marketplace, tried to sell cars online about five years ago, but “it didn't work, even though their site was visited fairly heavily”.

He said Germans might be unwilling to forgo haggling over the price of a car.

Nevertheless, Lidl believes it can succeed selling cars and make a profit, despite the fact that Germany is in recession.

British-based retail industry analysis company Verdict Research believes that Lidl's latest initiative is a shrewd and highly opportunistic move to exploit Germany's fiscal stimulus program, but will not last.

Verdict predicts that once the German government’s €2500 ($A4920) scrappage incentive for trading in old cars – which boosted new car sales by 21 per cent in February – inevitably expires, Lidl will withdraw its offer of selling cars online and concentrate on its core business of grocery retailing.

The government set aside enough for 600,000 scrappage applications and, after 85,000 applications were filed in the first four weeks, has already received 217,693 applications this month, raising the prospect that the fund will be exhausted long before the program expires at the end of the year.