Cobendai

Almost a hundred people they are still waiting for the car they bought and months ago they paid the Cobendai Group, the Hyundai, Peugeot, Suzuki, Subaru, KGM and MG dealer network in the Community of Madrid that has collapsed between non-payments, a pre-bankruptcy of creditors and the dismissal of its entire staff. Some customers paid the money in November 2025 and, seven months later, they neither have their vehicle nor know when they will have it. What has happened? The Cobendai Group entered into pre-bankruptcy at the end of April, according to account The Country. Since then, the company stopped responding to calls and emails, its workshops ran out of supplies and dealerships began to empty of cars. In parallel, the company opened an Employment Regulation File (ERE) for its 170 workers, a negotiation that has ended without an agreement. According to affirms El Español, the company has chosen to lay off the entire workforce through “objective” layoffs for economic, productive and organizational reasons. Shock. On the one hand, workers have not been paid since March, and on the other, customers who paid for their cars in advance have not received them yet. Cobendai became a benchmark in its sector. And just as they explain in El Español, in 2025, Hyundai Motor Spain awarded him the Dealer of the Year award, for his sales volume and customer service. Less than a year later, the same company has a debt of around 21 million euros, according to detailed an anonymous worker to El País. In detail. In mid-April, Cobendai announced that it would begin to deliver the pending vehicles to the approximately 150 affected people who reported the situation. Between the end of April and mid-May, it delivered more than a hundred cars, but deliveries stopped suddenly and left between 30 and 40 people without theirs, according to counted Francisco José Murcia, one of the affected clients, told El País, whose father paid 25,900 euros in cash in November. Added to this group are about 40 buyers of the MG brand through ASIMCO dealerships, also integrated in Cobendai. One of them, Silvia Corchero, reserved her car on November 26 and paid 21,500 euros in January without the registration ever taking place, according to the media. Between the lines. Neither Hyundai nor MG are directly responsible for the management of Cobendai, but both brands have been swept up in the dealership crisis and have begun to offer partial solutions. Hyundai Spain counted to El País that there are pending deliveries and assured that it was studying each case “individually”, in addition to insisting that the problem responds to “poor financial management” unrelated to the brand. MG, for its part, indicated that it monitors the situation and offers legal advice to clients who request it. Both manufacturers have begun to deliver replacement cars, although with conditions, since MG requires a deposit of 500 euros and limits use to 3,000 kilometers per month, as Corchero explained. For many affected people, it is a patch that does not solve the core of the problem. And the workers, what? The fired staff has between three and four unpaid payrolls and has only received an advance of 500 euros since March, according to denounced an anonymous employee told El País. The lawyer who represents the workers in the ERE negotiation, identified as Ana, explained told El Español that now the main question is when they will be able to recover that money, and pointed out that a good part of these amounts will have to be claimed from FOGASA, the state fund that guarantees unpaid salaries in the event of business insolvency, a procedure that is usually delayed. Cover image | Carlos Bustillo (Google Maps) In Xataka | Ryuta Kawashima, neuroscientist: manual shifting has “a significant effect on maintaining mental health and cognitive function”