[Aditya]

Toyota Kirloskar Motor has announced the expansion of U Trust, its used car business in India. The business, which was launched in 2007, will now cover 56 markets in 19 states.

Under Toyota U Trust, customers can sell, purchase and exchange Toyota and non-Toyota cars. Old cars of any make can be exchanged for a brand-new Toyota car as well.

U-Trust has a 203-point inspection check list to evaluate the condition of a vehicle. Each car is certified after checking the documentation, quality level, service history and genuine refurbishment by a U Trust dealer. Only cars which satisfy all these criteria are certified. After the car is sold, buyer details are provided to the seller customer. U Trust also has warranty offers on certified cars up to 2 years and 30,000km.

The used car market in India is growing fast. Used cars command a 30% higher market share than new ones.

Source: Autocar Professional

[Contrapunto]

I have used UTrust to buy my current pre-owned Innova G. It was a very smooth experience, very professional and quite transparent about the good as well as weak points of the car. They also gave very accurate estimate of the projected maintenance costs and the likely parts replacements that may come up.

I think we need these dealer backed pre-owned businesses to thrive to give greater depth to the auto market.

However, the 10 yr/ 15 yrs rule on diesel/ petrol vehicles, notwithstanding their roadworthiness, may be a dampener.

[gaurav_3000ad]

Good move by toyota to expand their footprint in the burgeoning used car market. Especially considering that maruti's true value arm is doing better than most car manufacturers in our auto industry.

Someone who is in the market for a used car will surely get more peace of mind buying a vehicle from company backed dealerships which can provide accurate service histories and warranty on certified cars. Spending 10-20 thousand more than buying from the open market is no price for a hassle free future ownership experience IMHO.

Good to know that you had a trouble free experience with Utrust Contrapunto.

[vasudeva]

What we also need is a serious upgrading of their website and also easier indexing/searching of used cars. I think they do not list all the cars that available physically. Real time upgrading will only help their used car business.

[GTO]

Originally Posted by vasudeva

What we also need is a serious upgrading of their website and also easier indexing/searching of used cars. I think they do not list all the cars that available physically. Real time upgrading will only help their used car business.

Totally & completely agreed. Car manufacturers have an incredibly poor understanding of the online domain, design & usability. Not only U trust, but even the websites of Maruti True Value & Mahindra First Choice suck.

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by GTO

Totally & completely agreed. Car manufacturers have an incredibly poor understanding of the online domain, design & usability. Not only U trust, but even the websites of Maruti True Value & Mahindra First Choice suck.

Just last month, I was somewhat interested in a used Corolla (2012+) or Camry (<4 yrs/50K). I browsed the Toyota site and what came up there in NCR was substantially less or different than what the dealers in NCR had in stock. The point is that the online website is more or less useless or even if you find something, it may not be there now. I have been visiting Toyota India website for many years now (maybe 2006) and sad to say that it is still third class in most respects unlike their cars. It is still first class though in getting dealer calls for new cars or customer support.

What to say, even other non-auto manufacturers have similar websites, eg consumer electronics. What is there on the website may not be available in the market. I do not think they bother to clean up the site.

If manufacturers are serious about used car business, they should have real time updation on additions/deletions. It is a matter of linking the dealer inventory to the online portal. I am sure they will get more enquiries and once word of mouth gets around that the site is accurate, more sales. Compared with third party sellers, more people will have higher trust in manufacturers' inventory and it is only a matter of listing that as soon as it is available. Inventory costs money and the quicker it is disposed off, the better for cash flows.

At this moment, the only way to find out what is available is to talk to individual dealers. Try to do that in a place like NCR or for that matter any metro with multiple dealers.

The used car market has been the subject of very important papers in economics relating to information asymmetry which is that sellers have more info than buyers, and it is very difficult to distinguish between lemons and peaches. See this publicly available paper by George Akerlof (this paper was an important contribution resulting in Mr. Akerlof winning the Nobel for Economics).

http://www.econ.yale.edu/~dirkb/teac...tforlemons.pdf