BY the end of last year, Akbar Pratama was ardently offering Toyota Avanza to Plaza Buaran visitors in East Jakarta. The sales executive of Auto 2000 Kalimalang was also persistently contacting his “prey” to make sure of automobile purchases through him. “We haven’t even reached the sales target of four cars per month yet,” he said.

Akbar’s aggressive move is reasonable because of the many predictions about tough auto sales in 2009.