Pace Car Rental is a car rental business that specialises in long term car rentals and courtesy cars. We have recently taken on a contract to supply all Citroën branches in Gauteng and Cape Town with courtesy cars and, for this reason, run a fleet of Citroën vehicles. Recently, we had a windscreen broken on one of our Citroën vehicles and had our first test to see if French cars really are so expensive to repair.
Our insurance company said we should take the car down to PG AutoGlass and get the windscreen repaired. PG AutoGlass charge an excess of 35% and the quote for the windscreen came to more than R12, 000. This was expected as it was a panoramic windscreen and I thought it would be expensive, but this was ridiculous. We decided to get a quote from Citroën direct and were surprised by what we found. We were able to get a cheap windscreen for a Citroën from Citroën. We were charged R5,800 by Citroën Woodmead and we acquired AB Windscreens to fit the windscreen for R228. The most amazing part of the experience was that we ordered the windscreen from Citroën in Woodmead at 12:30pm and the part was available at Citroën at 2:45pm, a mark of great service. I also enquired about a C4 windscreen and found that the genuine article was less than R3,000.
While I was there I got a quote for new shocks for a DS3 and was told that the parts would take 7 to 10 days to arrive, therefore, not all parts are available on such a quick basis. Based on my discussions with the staff at Citroën, they explained that Citroën have recently taken over the importation of the vehicles into South Africa from Imperial and now have 94% of all parts for their vehicles available in Linbro Park. They deliver to dealerships in Gauteng four times daily and they have cut margins to the bone to change the impression that French vehicles including Citroën have expensive parts. I will keep you updated on our further experiences as Pace Car Rental has more interactions with Citroën.