jonjo

I think its rather shocking how car prices in Australia have remained so high for so long and nothing has been done about it. European car manufacturers are offering sometimes up to twice the range of cars to the European market than to the Australian market. Peugeot for example offer one sedan to Australia, the 407. It has two trim levels and one engine size. Peugeot offer 4 engine sizes and 3 trim levels just on this one model alone, to the UK market. Peugeot also offer a heap of other models to the UK market that Australia is not privy to. Citroen and the other European car manufacturers do the same thing. The Australian car market only gets a small percentage of what foreign manufacturers put out there. Which, could explain the pricing in itself. By offering us less range we are paying more for limited choice. Ford offer substantially more models to the UK market than they do to the Australian Market. If Ford were to do the same in Australia, maybe, just maybe the Falcon wouldn't be as competitive any more. Same with Holden. Many people choose a falcon or commodore simply because it was their family car whilst growing up or because it has this "Australian Icon" label attached to it. the reality is, that the Australian Car market is way behind the rest of the world, not only on pricing, but technology. We are only starting to see technology come into our domestic cars now that have been available on European cars for quite a few years now. Does that mean that due to the pricing of cars in Australia that we are driving inferior cars, in a sense of technology based vehicles? possibly so. Given that we are on par with the U.S. dollar at present, why are car prices not changing? The new Porsche 911 Carerra GTS costs $112,000 in the U.S. $122,500 in the UK and $270,000 in Australia. Why are we paying over twice as much as the U.S. and UK for this car? I recall an article in a local paper about the cost of Used cars, and the Federal chamber of automotive industries spokesman, a Mr James Goodwin, stated that prices of used cars were fair because cars here lasted longer because of the less congested roads and the warmer climate. Not so sure that is an adequate reason to charge, in some cases, double what the car is worth in the European market? Until prices come down, through whatever means, we will not see much new European cars on our roads.