Just recently, we all saw on social media this black Lamborghini that was trashed after getting into a bad crash. I mean, a multi -million peso car wrecked in a street crash is not something we can laugh about even if we actually have the money to buy them. Seriously, that incident has got to hurt the owner of the supercar.
But, see, the car owner is not the only one who will be feeling the hurt sooner than later. Because we are not in Dubai, where there is a necropolis for trashed supercars, of course the owner will eventually want to have his very expensive car repaired, and repaired at the official dealer/distributor of Lamborghini in the country.
And this is where the story gets a little bit complicated. According to our sources in the industry, the trashed Lamborghini came from the “gray market” or it was smuggled (technical or otherwise) into the country using the different tricks many rich boys use to bring their toys in.
And because it is not a certified vehicle that was bought at the local franchise of Lamborghini, that distributor will have difficulty in accepting and repairing the damaged unit. There are many reasons behind this refusal. One is that they do not know the origin of the unit and if it has something illegal connected to it, like it was stolen from another country, or it had technical issues in its registration, or it was involved in a crime, then the distributor may face legal issues including the closure of their business or revocation of their hard won franchise.
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Another is purely business. A warranty of supercars like the one we are discussing now is valid anywhere in the world no matter where one bought it. A local franchise will have no recourse but to honor this warranty. But why would a business spend precious time, labor and even capital on a product that they did not actually sell? Someone else’s gain becomes their loss and this is painful for a business.
And this is why many of the sellers of extremely luxurious vehicles keep asking the government to help them stem the entry of gray market automobile products (supercars, luxury SUV’s, etc…) so that they can be protected. After all, these legitimate franchise holders pay enormous amount of taxes to sell their cars locally, and the gray market products may not even be paying the government anything at all.
And if you own a gray market supercar, chances are, either it is out of warranty or it has dubious papers which give the local dealer an excuse to refuse you the repair, or probably charge you an amount equivalent to a new car. But mostly they will just refuse so they don’t get into any legal issues.
