General Motors representative visits the country for the reintroduction of the brand.
The president of Santo Domingo Motors (SDM), Aníbal Rodríguez, informed this Thursday that the Cadillac brand will return to the Dominican Republic this year 2023 by SDM.
The introduction will be with two new models:
- The XT4 compact SUV.
- The Escalade SUV in its regular and extended versions.
“Today, in the Dominican Republic we will be presenting the reintroduction, the return of the Cadillac brand, and that is why it is the visit of the president of the General Motors factory in Mexico, José Francisco (Paco) Garza,” he said.
This Thursday they will unveil the new facilities of the Cadillac brand on John F. Kennedy Avenue, in which an investment of 140 million pesos was made, and it is projected to create about 160 direct and indirect jobs. It has a modern showroom.
“Santo Domingo Motors is a worthy representative of General Motors, especially Chevrolet, a much loved brand in the country,” said Paco Garza.
He added: “We are very happy to announce the official return of our iconic brand Cadillac to this market, and how good that it is through our commercial partner for more than a century, Santo Domingo Motors”.
He indicated that the Cadillac brand will celebrate 121 years of existence in August and has been more than 12 decades of leadership and engineering.
He pointed out that the Dominican market came out favorably through an analysis they made, which allowed them to decide to develop the project together with Santo Domingo Motors.
“When we carried out the analysis, it was favorable, and we decided, hand in hand with Santo Domingo Motors, to carry out and execute this project. Today there are brands competing with this market, which is one of the most important in the region, so we need to have a presence,” he said.
He emphasized that today, in order to compete in this specific segment, several things are required:
- First: the product is extremely relevant and “today Cadillac at a global level has differentiated itself as a brand with high technology, its entertainment system and interconnectivity systems are spectacular, active safety issue; exterior design issue, interior, really the attributes that are offered to our customers have to be differentiators”.
- Second, it has to do with the distributor. “The product is relevant, but we also need to have a commercial partner that has the characteristics of customer service, that has the investment capacity, the moral quality, the experience in the sector, and I think Santo Domingo Motors has all these requirements.”
“This presentation is going to be a success and we are going to be competing head to head with Germans and Americans in the Dominican market,” said the General Motors executive.
About Cadillac
Cadillac is a brand of luxury automobiles, manufactured and sold by the American company General Motors, created by William Murphy in 1902.
The name was taken from the founder of the city of Detroit, Michigan, in 1701: the French army officer, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. In the Dominican Republic it is represented and distributed by Santo Domingo Motors.
New vehicle fleet
In a press conference with representatives of the media, the president of Santo Domingo Motors highlighted the growth of the new vehicle market in 2022 with respect to 2021, going from 26,579 units of new vehicles in 2021, to a total of 40,015 in 2022, which means an increase of 50%.
According to what was explained, projections indicate that in 2023 this increase will continue with an estimated 141,871 new and used vehicles, which presents an increase of 11 % at the end of this year, despite the fact that production limitations persist in some brands.
Rodriguez said that, in this period, contrary to the behavior of new cars, imports of used units fell by 10% due to the low supply and higher prices in the United States, and high logistics costs from Asia.
However, he said that the used car market is expected to recover by 2023 due to the drop in freight rates to more “reasonable” values.
He highlighted the contributions of Santo Domingo Motors in the automotive sector, with the generation of 800 direct jobs and approximately 2,100 indirect jobs, an average annual contribution to the treasury of 3,000 million pesos and investments made in the last five years that exceed 1,700 million pesos. It also plans to invest 1.3 billion pesos over the next three years.
Aníbal Rodríguez explained that the automotive sector in the Dominican Republic is one of the main contributors to the national treasury.
“Only in direct collections, with respect to the automotive sector, last year 52.7 billion pesos were collected, composed of 31.4 billion pesos in the General Directorate of Customs (DGA), which represents 13.63% of the collection of the General Directorate of Customs, being the item that contributes the most to the total collections of the General Directorate of Customs, the automotive sector,” he said.
He added that, on the side of the General Directorate of Internal Taxes (DGII), in 2022, 21,294 million pesos were collected. In other words, “there is an important weight of what is the contribution of the automotive sector in the Dominican Republic”.
Source: Diariolibre.com
