Chinese automotive brands are strengthening their position on the Polish market. MG cars retain 48.3 per cent of their value after four years

Transparency note: This press release was originally published in Polish. The text has been machine translated. You can find the original press release here.

MG, the longest-established Chinese car brand in Poland, accounts for 80 per cent of used vehicles of this make in the Polish CARFAX database, which includes over 23 million cars. MG and BAIC cars retain almost half of their original value after four years of use and 60,000 kilometres of mileage. Experts point out that the growing popularity of Chinese cars will permanently change the market structure in both the new and used vehicle segments, and will also force competitors to adjust their prices.

Cars from Chinese manufacturers in Poland are breaking records in terms of the number of new car registrations, and their presence is also noticeable on the used car market, although on a much smaller scale. The most popular are MG cars, a Chinese brand that has been present on the Polish market for two years – they account for as much as 80 per cent of Chinese-made cars in the Polish CARFAX database of over 23 million used cars – a company that provides users with reports on the history of used cars from reliable and certified sources. The next most popular brands are BAIC (15 per cent), BYD (2 per cent), Maxus (1 per cent) and GWM (1 per cent).

The entry of Chinese car brands is undoubtedly one of the most important events for the Polish automotive market in years and will fundamentally change the rules of the game, especially in the used car segment. Chinese brands offer brand new vehicles at prices that were previously reserved for several-year-old used cars from popular European brands. This presents consumers with a completely new choice. In order to find buyers at all, used car dealers will be forced to radically reduce their prices, starting with the newest vehicles and ending with the oldest ones. It is safe to say that the era of "holding prices" is coming to an end, and the loss of value of previously popular models will accelerate significantly. says Robert Lewandowski, Business Development Manager at CARFAX Polska. "This revolution will also severely impact the current business model on which the Polish market was based: mass imports of cars from Western Europe. While this won't be completely halted, it will certainly be significantly reduced and its structure will change. Importing a car that's only a few years old will no longer be profitable if its price, after adding a margin, has to compete with a new Chinese car with a warranty. Imports will likely remain in niches: in the premium segment, where the prestige of brands like BMW or Audi will still prevail (at least for a while), and in the category of the cheapest cars, those a dozen or so years old, whose price is still well below the entry threshold for a new vehicle.

Already, every third car brand in Poland comes from China

In the last two years, more than twenty Far Eastern brands have appeared in our country, and a dozen more have announced their entry into the Polish market in the coming months. The result? Already one in three of the nearly seventy passenger car brands available on our market comes from China – says Cezary Spychała, Head of the RV and TCO Department at INFO-EKSPERT. "Attractive prices, equipment standards and ever-increasing quality are breaking stereotypes and making this growth in popularity stable. Everything indicates that this trend will create value for both new and used vehicles in the short term. The pillars of product value are subjective user experiences and objective indicators, such as failure statistics.

According to an analysis conducted by CARFAX in cooperation with INFO-EKSPERT, a company providing computer software for professional valuation and estimation of residual vehicle values (RV), MG cars show the lowest loss of value after two years of operation and 60,000 km of mileage, retaining 48.3% of their initial value. For BAIC cars, this figure is 47.2%, and for BYD cars, 44.7%. When comparing the average residual values for selected brands, it should be remembered that they are the result of the brand's portfolio, so those built on models powered by combustion engines with varying levels of electrification (from mHEV to PHEV) are higher than those whose model range is based on BEV models, emphasises Cezary Spychała, Head of the RV and TCO Department at INFO-EKSPERT.

We are also seeing a profound change in consumer preferences. For years, Poles accepted high mileage and uncertain service history, just to drive a car of a "proven" or "prestigious" brand. Today, this is changing. Chinese companies, like Dacia in the past, are proving that Poles can buy pragmatically. A long warranty provides peace of mind that no used car can offer. Modern equipment, available as standard, is becoming more important than the logo on the bonnet. This does not mean that cars that have been in accidents, have damage or very high mileage will completely lose customers, but they will have to be radically cheaper to justify the risk of purchase," adds Robert Lewandowski, Business Development Manager at CARFAX Polska. In summary, we are witnessing a real market reset. Current owners and sellers of several-year-old cars of popular brands will lose the most, as their vehicles will depreciate faster than ever. The big winner in this situation is the consumer, who gets a much wider choice: they can buy a brand new car with a long warranty or pay significantly less than before for a used car. This future could change if Chinese brands are forced to withdraw from European markets (e.g. for political reasons) or the quality of their vehicles proves so unsatisfactory in the long run that the market rejects them.