“Iranian Cars for Sale in Russia: Pros and Cons of Buying Iran Khodro Tara Sedans”

The “Persian Horse” has finally reached Russia. And this is not a figure of speech, but an almost literal translation of the name of the Iran Khodro car, which is about to appear in Rolf car dealerships. What scared the Russians the whole vulgar year, now you can officially buy for 1.5 million rubles. This is how much the Tara model with a manual transmission will cost. For a car with a gun will have to pay 1.7 million rubles. There are already several cars in the showrooms, by the end of the week there will be 30 of them. And later 60 more cars will be delivered. But the sale of even such a quantity can be considered a great success, says auto expert Vyacheslav Subbotin:

“Iran Khodro Tara is an Iranian version of a 20-year-old Peugeot. Naturally, it differs in appearance, but, in fact, the front and rear bogie, powertrains are all Peugeot. This is not the first time that the Iranians have entered with this car, and each time it is unsuccessful. Now it will be about the same. Our people have traveled in good cars, they know what it is. Which Iran? “Zhiguli” is now no one takes.”

Although the market is now sorely lacking budget cars. And Iran Khodro Tara with a manual is still the cheapest car after Lada Granta. Other cars that dealers import as parallel imports, with a price tag of 1.5 million rubles. cannot boast. For example, the Chinese analogue of the Volkswagen Polo – the Jetta VA3 model is sold for almost 2 million rubles. And by June, several more Iranian cars, but already of the Saipa brand, should appear on the market. By the way, they are also assembled on the basis of outdated Western models. But this can also be their peculiar advantage, says Yury Uryukov, an expert at the Autonet infrastructure center of the Moscow Polytechnic University:

“We can say that this car is partly familiar to our mechanics, they have already worked with Peugeot and Citroёn, which we officially sold. This allows us to hope that there will most likely be no shortage of spare parts and qualified personnel. While the branded dealer network is being established, these cars will be able to be serviced normally. I think we will not meet with any exotic in terms of repairing Iranian cars.”

But in practice, everything is not so simple. The problem is that Rolf imports Iran Khodro Tara cars through parallel imports. And it is not clear whether spare parts catalogs get into the country with them. And if they are not, then repairing such machines will have to be literally touched. So they said “Kommersant FM” in one of the capital’s car services:

– The question is, can the VIN of an Iranian car get through the parts catalog? If yes, then you can get any details. And if not, then, accordingly, you will have to select according to the pictures, roughly speaking. Okay, they gave us Iran Khodro Tara, but where should we put the VIN? to a specific program. Will she read this number or not? It will be difficult to find spare parts for this car. But again, the Iranians themselves will not supply anything, in any case they either rivet or supply from somewhere. Accordingly, this is the same selection, just without VIN.

– By eye, it turns out?

– Yes exactly.

However, this is not just a problem for the Iranians. Similar difficulties arose at first with some cars imported from China. At the same time, as experts note, past attempts to sell Iranian cars in Russia failed precisely because the importers were unable to arrange the supply of spare parts and provide warranty service.