Less AP so the price maintain

I got a call last week from a fellow forum member who enquire on what to look out for as he is looking for his giant (Toyota Alphard). We spoke at length on the various models and features that comes with each model.

Last week I took a drive to the dealer whom I bought my giant from. I was surprised to see that his yard has only a few unit of giant remaining. I remember when I was searching for my giant at his yard 7 months ago, his yard was full of giants. So I enquire with my Sales Advisor (SA) what's going on there. He highlighted that lately there is a lack of Approved Permit (AP) hence the lack of supply of cars.

The rumours goes that there is a new person looking after the AP issuance now and strictly enforce the usage of the AP. It seems owner of AP cannot sell the AP to dealers anymore. Also, dealer who is also AP holder must display their car within their own yard and hence non-AP holder who is getting their cars from those AP holders must now ask their customer to visit the yard of the AP holder. This will make it difficult for the non-AP holder dealer to sell their car now and inconvenient the customer to have to go to different places to see the car and then back to the dealer yard to negotiate the price etc.

I actually asked the SA to show me what he got and he took me to another dealer yard 5 minutes drive from his place. I had a look at that giant which is same year and selling the same price as mine but come with one less power door, no bluetooth and no roof-mounted LCD. Looks like the price of the giants has maintained for the last 6 months.

Due to the lack of supply of AP, the number of giants that are brought in also getting less. I also took a trip to Cheras AutoCity a week later to check out the availability of giants there. I remember back in early January I visited AutoCity almost every weekend just to check out if any new giant have arrived at the dealer yards.

Back then, almost every dealer would have a few unit of giants in their yard waiting for buyers. However, this time I noticed that only a handful of dealers are have stock for the giants. These dealers are also AP holder so they can afford to import the giants.

Also I noticed some of the larger dealers also started to import the 2nd generation Toyota Alphard and Toyota Vellfire. That means the number of 1st generation Toyota Alphard imported will also be smaller as the dealer will make more money selling 2nd generation Alphard/Vellfire as these cars cost almost double the price of the 1st generation.

While I was there, I did check out a few dealers to find out what spec are available now. Most the 1st generation Alphard are either 2005 or 2006 2.4L new facelift model. However, the spec are quite low compared to what was available many months ago. Most of them has one power door, rear camera and HU without the bluetooth function. There were some with twin power door but fitted with after market HU that don't come with bluetooth function.

The 2005 model was asking for RM185K onward while the 2006 model is going for RM195K before negotiation. Given that the spec of these cars are not high, I would imagine the price should be lower. But then since there is lack of AP which means less car to choose from so it also drive the price high up again. I would recommend any potential buyer to wait for another batch to get a better spec giant.