Owning a good car is everyone’s dream. But what happens when your good car that you own is no longer on the market because it is a discontinued model? Of course, you cannot change your car frequently but you sure can know what won’t be available at your service anymore. As disappointing as this might be, take a look at some of the struggles you may have to go through for your discontinued car in India.
- Servicing your car:
One of the primary concerns that come to our minds is servicing our car. Maintaining a discontinued car will not be as easy as it seems. There can be multiple problems such as:
- Where the car discontinues but the company exists – this can still be serviced as the parts will still be available. For those who are not aware, there is a law that makes car companies supply spares for 15 years after the car is discontinued.
- Where the company and the car get discontinued and cease to exist – this will be a major problem as the spare parts need to be imported from another country or an International website.
Both of these situations put you in a pretty hard situation provided you can still get major services and fix them.
- Resale Value:
Another concern is the resale value of your discontinued car. This can become a problem as the advanced model of the car will have a higher value than the discontinued car.
This not only includes the price of the car but also the depreciation value. To put it in simpler terms, a car’s value decreases as newer cars keep launching in the market. - Safety features:
With each new car that launches in the market, the safety features are more advanced and suitable for everyday use. And automatically, older cars do not have the advanced safety features as they might have been suitable the year they launched.
Even after changing spare parts and getting newer parts, the car’s durability also reduces and cannot be relied on for a prolonged period. - Emission concerns:
Another thing we immediately think about older variants of cars is the emission concerns. These cars belong to different Bharat Stage emission standards and may not comply with the present BS-VI norms.
If a car complies with the BS-III or BS-IV emission standards, it’s likely to produce more pollution which is not suitable to the current emission standards. - Random and unexpected car breakdowns:
The probability of something going wrong in an older variant of the car is highly likely and hence cannot be trusted especially while travelling long distances. This again relates to the first problem we mentioned, the availability of spare parts to fix the car.
With not being able to start the car in this situation, you need to get your car towed away and be your own mechanic or find a service provider that would fix the problem at a higher cost.
It is very unlikely that your car may never be able to get repaired but you might get an imported spare part that might save your car.
These are some of the important and need of the hour issues of discontinued cars in India. It is a safer option to buy a car that is still in and around the market but if you do own a discontinued car, be aware of what you can do to maintain your car further.
Also, read : “5 best mileage diesel cars “
