| |
According to Khabar Khodro, the CEO of Saipa Automotive Group announced the cessation for production of the second generation of Pride and said: ‘The last Pride 111 of Saipa Automotive Group's X100 family products was produced on Thursday, April 23, 2020. Thus, the production of two out of three models of pride (132 and 111) have been removed from Saipa's Iranian product portfolio.’
Referring the detailed planning of Saipa Automotive Group for the departure of Pride series from the production line, Mr. Seyed Javad Soleimani added: ‘we had already announced that the sales of Pride 111, to those ordered it, would have continued until late April but its production was stopped as we managed to hit the sales targets a month sooner through our accurate planning.’
‘The same happened to Pride 132 and we succeeded in stopping its production on January 5th, about a fortnight before the due date.’
‘former managers had frequently debated over the cessation of production for Pride 111 because of its old technology but it was never done for various reasons’, said Mr. Soleimani. ‘the departure of [all variants of Pride], which was followed seriously, had been on my agenda from the first day.’
When asked about the replacement of this car, he said:’ As said previously, there would be no replacement to a 2600-dollar car since it is quite impossible to import car parts amid the market’s uncertainty, fluctuation of forex rates and cruel sanctions.’
Mr. Soleimani mentioned the USD3,500 to USD4,100 price for Pride and said:’ Unfortunately, many believe that the price for Pride is unbridled. However, this is not correct as we used to offer this car with a USD2350 price tag. Because of the cessation of production, this car had not been on the order list for a long time and, therefore, it is clear that setting its price in the market has nothing to do with Saipa. Like other products, its price is set by owners, sellers and in general car dealers, who abuses online services to increase the prices.’
Saipa’s CEO added: ‘For many years, Pride has rightly or wrongly been used as a pretext for criticising and even destroying the automotive industry and as a tool for different people to attract attention on social media. Even now that we have stopped the production of Pride, there are many who advocates the presence of Pride in the market because of its low price!’
He said that 90% of Pride's critics were not the owners or even drivers of the car. ‘Unfortunately, the irrational use of it on suburban roads, unsafe driving at very high speeds and non-compliance with traffic rules have made Pride a symbol of the destruction of the country's automotive industry.’
In the end, Soleimani said: "Our plan, in Saipa, is to make a serious and tangible change in the product portfolio of this automotive group, and in this regard, we have put the production of new and up-to-dated cars and improving the quality of previous products on the agenda."
"Production of modern, high-quality products and close to global standards is also the main axis of Saipa's product development plans, and the production of Shahin and Saipa’s new CUV in addition to Saina and Quick facelifts in 2020 was under this plan.’, said Mr. Soleimani.
