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Some dealers are willing to push out existing brands to make room for BYD's new Denza offshoot on showroom floors.
Chinese luxury brand Denza – part of the vast BYD empire – has hit the ground running in Australia with 1000 orders in the system.
It is according to Chief Operating Officer Mark Harland, who is leading the Denza brand as it launches with two off-road SUVs on showroom floors.
A smaller portion of the orders is for the larger and more expensive Denza B8, which is more of a competitor to the Toyota LandCruiser 300 Series on paper.
The Denza B5 is priced from $74,990 plus on-road costs, while the larger Denza B8 is priced from $91,000 before on-road costs.
“Building a luxury brand in any country – certainly Australia – is not an easy thing to do. That’s why we chose B5 and B8 to start with in Australia,” Harland told Drive.
“In rough numbers, we’ve got over 2000 test drives that we’ve done, and that was just with our 10 or 12 pre-production cars.
“And then, we’ve secured about 50 per cent of those as signed orders, so I’m feeling pretty good about the start that we’ve had.”
The Denza brand is only new to Australia, with two models and four dealers, but it is set to expand in 2026 with up to five new models, and a total of 20 to 25 dealers around the country.
While Denza is buoyed by this level of interest from customers, Harland also reports on positive signs from dealerships around Australia.
“We’ve got a lot of dealers reaching out and saying: ‘hey, I’ll be happy to move this brand out if you want to move your brand in’,” the executive told Drive.
“Three years ago, when we were with BYD, people are like: ‘I don’t know if I’m willing to move this brand out for BYD’.
“Now obviously, given what BYD has done – they will be close to 100 dealers soon – some [of our dealers] are overlapping with BYD, but some are standalone who are putting their hand up and saying ‘we want to be a part of this’.
“So the signs are very positive, but it would be arrogant of me to think it’s going to be an easy road.”
When asked about the brands that might lose dealership space, and whether they are mainstream or luxury marques, Harland said it was a mix of both.
“I won’t name names, because that’s not what I do. But it’s a mixture of brands, that even two or three years ago, you would have said ‘these are staple brands’.
“I would say for the most part, call them luxury, premium, mid-luxury… there’s a lot of those brands in that kind of in-between area, and some of those brands have fallen off in the last couple of years.
“For various reasons, because of either product, lack of product innovation, long supply chain lead times, or price increases. Those are the opportunities.”
Sam Purcell has been writing about cars, four-wheel driving and camping since 2013, and obsessed with anything that goes brum-brum longer than he can remember. Sam joined the team at CarAdvice/Drive as the off-road Editor in 2018, after cutting his teeth at Unsealed 4X4 and Pat Callinan’s 4X4 Adventures. Off-road writer of the Year, Winner - Sam Purcell
