$20m in car sales transacted at Car-nival

176 cars sold vs 298 last year.

Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) announced through a release that $20 million was transacted during its CATS Classified Car-nival 2013, an annual mega car mart event was held at the Singapore Expo.

A total of 176 cars were sold. Of which, 102 were new cars and 74 were pre-owned cars. This is compared to 298 cars sold last year.

SPH attributed the more tepid sales to the rising COE prices and restricted financing for vehicles in Singapore that has discouraged car purchasing among Singaporeans.

Still, SPH insisted that response received at Car-nival was better-than-expected, with the event still drawing in a a crowd of 70,000.

Eddie Loo, Managing Director of CarTimes Automobile said: "The quality of the crowd this year was better than last year. We sold our first car as early as 11am, while last year we only sold our first car at 1pm. If there were no loan curbs, I am sure that sales would have been much better."

Car buyers interviewed cited discounts and attractive promotional packages as the main reasons for their purchases.

Mrs Ow, a 52-year-old executive, bought a brand new Honda Accord from the Honda booth for $211,900. She said: "I bought it because it is a very good car and it costs a few thousand dollars cheaper here than in the showroom. They also threw in a lot of goodies as well as a servicing package."