My neighbors back in 1998 or so bought one of the first Sonatas in dark green. The car rolled back out of the driveway partially into the street. Apparently something in the transmission broke. A maintenance guy that I worked with back in 2002ish had a Kia and the engine blew up after 10k miles. They did fix it under warranty but it put him off the Kia brand.
Vinfast, what on earth are you doing - VF8 and VF9 test drive and failed attempt to lease a VF8
- Thread starter dogememe
- Start date
There were a couple of early adopters of Korean cars at work. One had a Hyundai Excel and the other a Kia Sophia. Both drove their machines past 200K, so they couldn't have been all that bad.
In the case of Vinfast, I do wonder why the company would have invested the time and money in jumping through the hoops required to offer a road vehicle in this country and then failed to follow through with the marketing and financing effort required to make a go of it. Low availability and low deliveries would seem to be customer repellent since nobody would want a vehicle that looks likely to be orphaned with no parts and service infrastructure left in place.
In the case of Vinfast, I do wonder why the company would have invested the time and money in jumping through the hoops required to offer a road vehicle in this country and then failed to follow through with the marketing and financing effort required to make a go of it. Low availability and low deliveries would seem to be customer repellent since nobody would want a vehicle that looks likely to be orphaned with no parts and service infrastructure left in place.
Banks won't lend money to less than perfect credit scores because they know the Vinfast are not very good right now. Someone with a crap credit score wouldn't think twice to walk away from a car and the financial obligation that would cost a lot of money to fix. People with good credit tend to want to keep it that way.
Also, the banks look at if they have to repo the car, how much and how fast can they recoup their outlay.
With tariffs in play, they took a big gamble. Many automakers have a captive finance arm(Ford, Toyota - Toyota Financial also works with Mazda) or work with major banks(Subaru & Chase, Ally & GM) but the subprime market is dominated by CAC and Santander(who also worked on Uber’s financing for drivers until they decided to work Hertz for leasing). Some places will give low-income buyers a grant to buy an EV or a hybrid funded by carbon taxes and voluntary buybacks of older cars - but they want proven(Bolt/Leaf or Prius PHEV) and not a gamble.
The finance arm of the automakers as well as the banks see the auction market as a way to recoup their costs - and a car like VinFast or even a Tesla with the current political tides won’t net much at Manheim or ADESA(Carvana) for remarketing to a car lot.
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This! Vinfast "sold" 999 original vehicles to the Vietnamese community as it's considered a good luck number. If it weren't for the stupid "Carbon offset credits " that Tesla received they'd be gone and bankrupt as well.
wemay
Site Donor 2023
This thread is giving Vinfast the most visibility it has ever recieved....ever.
I hope they make it out of this stage. It would nice to have another choice in the EV market.
I hope they make it out of this stage. It would nice to have another choice in the EV market.
I saw one about a month ago and thought it was a Polestar at first. Had to come home and google it.
Their US marketing effort reminds me of Citroen back in the sixties, although the DS was a truly great car that might have done well here with an appropriate level of effort. Alas, never happened and Citroens on US roads were never more than a rarely seen curiosity.
The same could be said of pre-Fiat Lancia or Alfa, intersting cars offered here in nugatory numbers.
The last pre-Fiat Lancia I saw in the wild was a Flaminia ragtop that looked original and patinaed but not tatty and that was more than a decade back.
Was there ever anything cooler than an Alfa 1750 GTV?
The same could be said of pre-Fiat Lancia or Alfa, intersting cars offered here in nugatory numbers.
The last pre-Fiat Lancia I saw in the wild was a Flaminia ragtop that looked original and patinaed but not tatty and that was more than a decade back.
Was there ever anything cooler than an Alfa 1750 GTV?
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- 276
LOL you had the authentic Vietnamese experience, this is how they do things.
My wife and inlaws are Vietnamese and I love them but for all their constant hustle and bustle they are inefficient and chaotic.
Their language alone is crazy inefficient. Just asking a question like: 'I'm going to the shop now, do you want to come with me?' This breaks them, they cannot translate it.
My wife and inlaws are Vietnamese and I love them but for all their constant hustle and bustle they are inefficient and chaotic.
Their language alone is crazy inefficient. Just asking a question like: 'I'm going to the shop now, do you want to come with me?' This breaks them, they cannot translate it.
You want a more domestic example of failed marketing? The Chevy Volt. The Voltec drivetrain and technology was brilliant. My 2015 Volt was an AWESOME car for the year I owned it. It drove like a real EV around town while I was also able to drive to LA and back nonstop in one day hassle free. It was the smoothest hybrid system I've been in, and the competition was behind for years. The first plug-in Prius did 8 miles of EV range and kicks on the engine if you accelerate too hard or turn on HVAC while the Volt did 40 miles of real, pure EV driving before firing up the engine.
Yet, here we are, and while GM is second only to Tesla for EVs (which is great, there are two GM EVs in my driveway), they had the lead on plug in hybrids or range extended EVs or whatever you want to call them and they squandered it with poor marketing and dealers that straight up didn't want to sell the cars and now they don't sell a single hybrid in the US?
Edit: GM should have put Voltec in an Equinox or Colorado. Those would have been WINNERs with good marketing and some effort training and incentivizing dealers to sell them.
Trying to get government subsidies (Vietnam), and moving money outside of a communist nation into the US / Europe.
harbor
Site Donor 2025
This is a strong signal from VinFast
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Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast said it will close its company-owned stores in California and move entirely to a franchised dealer model in the U.S. According to Automotive News, VinFast opened distribution to franchised dealers in late 2023 but kept its 15 California direct-sales showrooms. VinFast said April 24 as part of its fourth-quarter earnings report that it will close those stores and expand through new dealers. “VinFast intends to transition to a full dealer franchise model by closing all of its existing [direct to consumer] showrooms in California ... in the coming months,” the company said in a press release. “As of today, VinFast has already developed a network of 38 operational and to-be-operational dealers in 16 states across the U.S., including one dealer in California,” the automaker said. California is by far the largest market in the U.S. for battery-electric vehicles, with about one-third of all EV registrations in the January-February period, according to the most recent data available from S&P Global Mobility. Click here for the full story.
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This is a strong signal from VinFast
[td width="339px"]VinFast to Close Company Stores in California, Rely Entirely on Dealers in U.S.
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Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast said it will close its company-owned stores in California and move entirely to a franchised dealer model in the U.S. According to Automotive News, VinFast opened distribution to franchised dealers in late 2023 but kept its 15 California direct-sales showrooms. VinFast said April 24 as part of its fourth-quarter earnings report that it will close those stores and expand through new dealers. “VinFast intends to transition to a full dealer franchise model by closing all of its existing [direct to consumer] showrooms in California ... in the coming months,” the company said in a press release. “As of today, VinFast has already developed a network of 38 operational and to-be-operational dealers in 16 states across the U.S., including one dealer in California,” the automaker said. California is by far the largest market in the U.S. for battery-electric vehicles, with about one-third of all EV registrations in the January-February period, according to the most recent data available from S&P Global Mobility. Click here for the full story.
Yep, my friend is getting laid off at the end of June. In its last moments Fisker did the same thing... going from direct to consumer to a dealer network. I'm so glad we went with the Equinox EV instead of the VF8!