Iran's BMW dealer has friends in high places

Visit the slick website of Persia Khodro, Iran’s BMW dealer, and you’ll learn that the full range of cars is available — from the 1-Series to the i8 — but there are 20 showrooms and parts suppliers in the country. And women can buy, too. This isn’t Saudi Arabia. Despite the Islamic Republic, they can drive in Iran, and discreet saleswomen in head scarves are ready to assist.

“[Persia Khodro] tries to increase the number of its retailers across Iran and offer services which are unique to Iran,” a new press release says. “The company seeks to meet the demands of BMW owners promptly and maintain its standards at the highest international level.” Last year, there was a big party at headquarters celebrating 40 years of the 3-Series, complete with a parade of classic cars from Teheran to the northern tourist town of Kelardasht.

With economic sanctions on Iran in place, luxury car buyers had trouble raising the necessary foreign currency and imported Porsche, BMW and Mercedes cars piled up at dealerships . Kia and Hyundai were the bestselling imports in the first six months of 2015.

According to the International Business Times, reporting last July, “With U.S. automakers still barred from doing business in Iran, the Iranian market for foreign marques is left largely to the Europeans, including Renault, which along with Peugeot had been sending partially assembled cars to Iran to sell in the local market until the most recent sanctions were put in place in 2011.” That was then. “Just hours after the nuclear deal was announced, Paris-based PSA Peugeot outlined plans for new Iranian production.”

But now the floodgates are open, and the affluent classes are buying luxury again. The biggest sellers now are cars that sell for $8,000 to $10,000, like China-sourced, made-in-Iran Cherys and Lifans. Slightly more upscale are the Iran Khodro and Saipa sedans. But the market is set for big gains in both imports and domestics. Analysts say the current 1.4 million annual sales (for 2015) could zoom to four million by 2020.

Automakers want in. Audi said in January it is considering its first foray into the Iranian market. Mercedes — long the model of choice for the country’s wealthy — has already signed letters of intent to jump in with trucks.

Persia Khodro has friends in high places. The press release notes the concession was “handed over to the private sector” three years ago but, as Britain's Telegraph reports, the specifics are fascinating. Persia Khodro is partly owned by Rey investment group, an arm of the Shah Abdulazim religious charity, run by Ayatollah Mohammed Rey-Shahri, a former minister of intelligence and a close ally of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei himself has been seen riding around in a BMW, which is certainly a vote of confidence in the brand. The Iranian clergy have taste in cars, and so do their offspring.

Making headlines recently in Teheran was a fatal crash in a brand-new Porsche Boxster S. The car belonged to Mohammad Hossein Rabbani-Shirazi, who was letting his glamorous 20-year-old girlfriend drive. Both were killed, but the real scandal was the fact that Rabbani-Shirazi’s grandfather was Ayatollah Abdolrahim Rabbani-Shirazi, an aide to Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1979 revolution and a high-ranking official afterward. Ayatollah Rabbani-Shirazi also died in a car crash — in 1982.

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