Quote:
Originally Posted by 2011G6E
There's a whole science to how supermarkets are laid out and aisles are set up. It's actually fascinating. One easy "for instance", next time you're in a supermarket go to the meat department and look up at the flouro lights...look carefully and you'll see they have a slight pink tint to make the meat below them look more "red" and appealing. Just a little bit of psychological pushing.
Anyway, onto my personal "Why is it?" list.
* Why is there such a thing as a luxury car tax? Is it to "punish" people who want a decent car? Is it purely to make money (of course it is)? It artificially inflates the price of high quality foreign cars (as well as second hand prices) and keeps people out of the latest and greatest. For instance, the TV show Fifth Gear was critisisng the 300C Chrysler in England saying you could instead have a 5 series BMW. Maybe in England, but not here. You have to stump up another thirty grand or so to get into a 5 series here in Australia over a 300C, and that's just the base model.
I remember when the tax first came in, it was set unrealistically low and amusingly even things like a Toyota Tarago with a few options became, suddenly, a "luxury car" as it's price crept over the limit... 
* My favourite bug-bear...why can't people make up their own minds about whether they want to drive brand new LHD cars? If you are afraid to, don't. No other country has such an official terror of letting people drive a car with the wheel on whatever side they like...why are we different?
I do of course suspect I know why...what if foreign makers were allowed to bring in new LHD cars? With only minor mods like which way the headlights dip...the prices would be way below what we are used to paying for cars made especially for our tiny market, which would kill local manufacturing stone dead.
This, combined with a special set of safety regs that ignore reality mean we pay a lot more for imported cars than we should. If a car has passed something like the strict Euro testing, then let it in with no further years of testing to see if it's "safe".
* Import duties and protectionist tariffs. Why? I will lay money that these duties and taxes stay well and truly in place once local manufacture stops here and there is, really, nothing to "protect". |
The pricing of Euros is more to do with their pricing structure rather than a small percentage of extra taxes.
Australian's are willing to pay through the nose for cars they perceive as "high quality" so those manufacturers price accordingly.
Have a look at how much Mercedes started protesting and having a right old sook about the Government considering to allow parallel importing on vehicles, coming up with every excuse under the sun to stop it from happening.
Why pay inflated Australian prices when you could import the same car in RHD from overseas cheaper than buying it in the dealership here?
These importers would have been celebrating the death of locally manufactured cars, but when their business comes into the firing line they're crying no fair.
Since we no longer have our own manufacturing industry, I put forward why do we still need to comply with ADR? We already use Euro emissions standards, so why not Euro/Jap/USA design regulations (with minor modifications - headlights for example).
Then cars would be cheaper again
