10 hours ago
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A handful of BYD dealers outside capital cities will be given the green light to maintain luxury Denza vehicles, for customers looking to travel Australia.
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Owners of Denza B5 and B8 four-wheel-drives looking to explore the Australian outback will eventually be able to visit BYD dealers in rural areas to have their vehicles maintained.
Denza – BYD's new prestige off-shoot – will initially focus on its own dealer network, starting with four Australian showrooms across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, before expanding to 20 to 25 locations by the end of next year.
Not every corner of the country will have a Denza dealer, however, so the marque will allow select rural BYD showrooms to work on B5s and B8s, should owners need assistance outside of major cities.
"In the future, as we start to build our volume and the car parc, we are looking to authorise select BYD dealers in rural areas [to service Denzas]," Mark Harland, chief operating officer of Denza Australia, told local media.
"So if we say, listen, here's an area that we'll never have a Denza store likely, and you know, [the dealers] may sell two or three BYDs a month, we can authorise them to do [Denza] service if someone's travelling in the Outback, or Northern Queensland.
"But, for now, we want to do the majority of the service through the Denza dealers exclusively, not through BYD."
Harland said Denza is already building up a stockpile of parts for its two launch vehicles.
"I've already got parts in country for B5, and B8 is landing," he said.
"We'll be sharing the warehouses. We have new warehouses that we've put in place for BYD. We'll be sharing those BYD warehouses. B5 parts are already in country, B8 parts will be here shortly."
Denza will make use of behind-the-scenes infrastructure set up by its parent company to reduce costs, though BYD dealers will never sell the luxury brand, nor – outside of rural areas – work on them.
"Behind the curtain .. as much as I can take advantage of the size and the scale of BYD – the tech, the batteries, all that – I take advantage as much of that as possible," said Harland.
"In front of the curtain – dealer facing, customer facing – it needs to feel like a luxury brand, and all those touchpoints have to be unique, in terms of loaner cars, service.
"Everything we do needs to be unique to what people expect with luxury brands."
BYD's dealer network currently stretches to 90 showrooms, 84 include service networks.
The master brand is now encouraging BYD customers to use its dealer network to have their cars serviced, rather than rely on an arrangement with mycar Tyre & Auto – formerly Kmart Tyre & Auto – set up in the early days of the car maker in Australia.
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Alex Misoyannis has been writing about cars since 2017, when he started his own website, Redline. He contributed for Drive in 2018, before joining CarAdvice in 2019, becoming a regular contributing journalist within the news team in 2020. Cars have played a central role throughout Alex’s life, from flicking through car magazines at a young age, to growing up around performance vehicles in a car-loving family. Highly Commended - Young Writer of the Year 2024 (Under 30) Rising Star Journalist, 2024 Winner Scoop of The Year - 2024 Winner
