No Chevrolets have entered Iran, said the chairman of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration.
"An order was registered for Chevrolets made in South Korea, but they did not enter the country because of restrictions on the import of such cars, Masoud Karbasian said in a press conference on Monday," IRNA reported.
After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran placed a ban on the import of most American goods, including cars.
In May 2015, local media reports said an Iranian company named Saham Pajoohan Mehr had obtained an official permit for importing Chevrolets.
The company was reportedly authorized to bring in the Chevrolet Trax model, according to the local car website Asre Khodro at the time.
Financial Tribune contacted SPM for a confirmation of the deal on phone and a company representative, who did not give her name, said, "Yes the deal is real. We have been given the license for the Chevrolet brand in mainland Iran."
It's not known if any actually made it into Iran before the ban was imposed, but it may be assumed that orders for the cars were made and they will now have to be resold to other regional markets. Iran's Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade denied the news weeks after its release.
For a certain period, Chevrolet was listed by the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran among cars that can be imported until it was removed from the list on May 4.
Valiollah Afkhamirad, the head of TPO, had stressed in a previous interview that no American cars have entered the country and explained that the order for importing Chevrolet was placed in a country other than the US.
"However, no action has been taken to import the vehicles," he said. Meysam Rezaei, the head of Iran's Car Importers Guild, also said General Motors, which is the parent company of Chevrolet, has officially said that it will not be delivering services to five countries, including Iran.
Irrespective of other limitations, one of the main regulations in place for car imports stipulates that the foreign company must set up after-sales and repair centers in Iran.
Given the fact that Chevrolets are particularly costly to maintain, the absence of official after-sales and repair centers would have posed a major problem.
