Family Pays Loan for Chinese Car Without Parts

A family from Ufa has been waiting for months for repairs to their car, which they handed over to an official dealer. The family believes the vehicle is sitting in the workshop just rusting and blames the dealership, claiming it is deliberately holding the car. However, as the dealer himself explained, he also got into an unpleasant situation, but none of it depends on him. UFA1.RU looked into what is happening.

Dmitry and his wife Yulia considered buying a new car in 2025. They chose the SWM G05 Pro, a Chinese crossover that began production in 2019. The main plant is in China, and in 2023 another one opened in Kaliningrad at the Avtotor facility.

In May, the family bought the car on credit. Under the bank agreement, they must pay 70,000 rubles ($824 at current rates) each month.

However, a few months later, the new crossover was involved in a serious accident. Fortunately, the car was insured, so the family filed a claim with the insurance company, which suggested sending the car for repairs to a partner auto service on Tramvaynaya Street in Ufa. But there they were soon told: there are no spare parts for this car not only at their shop but everywhere in the country.

So the insurance company offered the Ufa residents to find a repair service themselves, promising to pay for it. That is how Dmitry found the official SWM dealer — Perfecto Auto dealership, and the car was sent there in mid-August, a month and a half after the accident.

«It has been two and a half months of waiting. We called the dealer every day and asked: «When will the parts arrive? When will repairs start?» The answer was always the same: «We are waiting for delivery.» On 5 September, the insurer approved the work order in full for 921,600 rubles ($10,800 at current rates). On 22 September, they paid the invoice. The family is waiting. Repairs have not started, nothing is happening, the car is sitting in the workshop rusting, and we continue to pay the loan for a non-working vehicle — we have paid 313,500 rubles ($3,700 at current rates) to the bank for a car that cannot be used,» Dmitry lamented.

According to him, the dealership lacks key parts: headlights, bumper, grilles, and brackets worth about 170,000 rubles ($2,000 at current rates).

Dmitry and his wife contacted the dealership, but as the man insists, they received no clear answer. At one point, he started communicating with a mechanic working on his car. However, the mechanic was later allegedly forbidden from contacting the client. Dmitry provided a copy of the correspondence where the mechanic says: «Management reprimanded me. So I have a request, purely human — don’t come to the service just to chat like that. If you have questions, handle it through work channels — by phone or appointment. No hard feelings. I got in trouble for unprofessional relations.»

Since repairs never started, Dmitry, acting on behalf of his wife (the car is registered in her name), sent a pre-trial claim to the dealership on 23 January. He also sent it to the SWM plant in Kaliningrad, but says he has not received any response yet.

The Perfecto Auto dealership is owned by Astra Group LLC from Moscow Oblast. According to Kontur.Focus, the company was registered in August 2024 and is engaged in car sales and maintenance.

Until October 2025, the director was Anton Butuzov, who now runs his own dealership in Moscow. The company is currently headed by Galina Kharitonova, who had no prior business management experience. At the end of 2024, Astra Group’s revenue amounted to 102.5 million rubles ($1,205,900 at current rates), with a net loss of 684,000 rubles ($8,000 at current rates).

As Konstantin, head of service and maintenance at Perfecto Auto, commented to UFA1.RU, Dmitry’s wife did contact them. For the insurance company, they compiled a list of parts and services needed for the car’s repair (including radiator, bumper, spoiler, etc., totaling 921,000 rubles ($10,800 at current rates)).

«About 70% of the parts on this list have already arrived. The remaining 30% we don’t have, and they are exactly what we need to start assembly — brackets, fasteners, bumpers, radiator grilles. We have done everything that depended on us. Without the parts that the factory does not supply, we cannot start repairs,» the service manager said.

However, he knows that the needed parts will arrive in Moscow in two weeks, and from there they will be forwarded to Ufa. That is, from Chongqing (2,000 kilometers from Beijing), where the main plant is located, the parts will be taken to Kaliningrad, to the Russian enterprise, then to Moscow and Ufa.

The parts are supplied by SWM’s Russian subsidiary — Shinerei Motors Rus LLC. According to Kontur.Focus, the company was registered in Moscow Oblast in 2021.

The director is Vyacheslav Galuzinsky, who previously owned a dental clinic and a fruit wholesale company, and was affiliated with an official Lifan dealer.

The owner of Shinerei is the Dong Fang Xin Yuan Group Company from Chongqing, China. Revenue for 2024 was 9.1 million rubles ($107,100 at current rates), with a loss of 11 million rubles ($129,400 at current rates).

Why the enterprise could not find parts for half a year is unknown to the official dealer, but its representative emphasizes that everything was explained to Dmitry (which he confirms).

«Apparently, he was not satisfied with our answer, and he started filing complaints, although he has the right to do so. But he does not call our work number; he is now working through the media, law enforcement agencies, and so on,» added Konstantin.

We also asked about the ‘communication ban.’ According to Konstantin, the situation was slightly different: he was not banned from communicating with the client, but from using his personal phone for that. Moreover, our interlocutor notes, the entire correspondence needs to be reviewed to understand what happened.

Dmitry added that he also contacted government authorities. Rospotrebnadzor (Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection) refused him: the repairs are not carried out under a direct contract, but under OSAGO (compulsory motor third-party liability insurance), and the rules for service provision (which the applicant believed were violated) do not apply to this type of repair by law. The prosecutor’s office forwarded the appeal to Rospotrebnadzor.