SHANGHAI — Here in China’s biggest city, spring has arrived and the weather is getting warm. But the chill of the coronavirus epidemic is still wreaking havoc with the city’s car dealerships.
While automakers around the world worry about factory production and the supply line of Chinese parts, China’s retail market — the world’s biggest — has fallen catastrophically. New-vehicle sales for the first two weeks of February were down 92 percent as citizens were instructed to stay home. Many continue to stay home, or at least stay out of dealerships.
A visitor stepping into the Volkswagen dealership on Wuzhong Road in southwest Shanghai last week might have thought he had mistakenly walked into a clinic.
The scene: Everybody was wearing face masks. A desk was set up at the gate where visitors are required to fill out a form with their contact details. All customers must have their temperature taken before being allowed into the store.
“Inventories are plenty,” Wang Yihao, a salesman at the store assured Automotive News. “So there will be no waiting period after a customer places an order.”
The same customer procedures, mandated by the Shanghai municipal government for retail businesses in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus, were in force at a Toyota dealership across the road.
