gjw@floyd.UUCP (Greg Wroclawski) (11/09/83)
I beleive that this discussion started from an article published in the business section of Wednesday October 12, 1983 New York Times. There it compared that a 190E Mercedes in Germany cost $10,601 while the same car in here cost $24,000. True, the US model has a lot more standard equipement than the base German version. But, does A/C, cruise control, electric sunroof, larger fuel injected engine, power steering plus a few other comfort and convenience options plus emission controls add $14,000 to the base price of a $10,000 car? The safety improvements are minimal since the Mercedes is a relatively safe car already. Incidently, the European commonwealth of nations has emission levels that although not as strict as ours require substantial emission controls. The article also compared several other cars such as the Audi 4000S which in germany the similarly equipped model is called the Audi 80GL. The US price is $12,205 while the German price is $7,178. Is a 70% increase in price needed to cover emission controls and safety equipment. Another example cited was a Porche 928. This car is sold at the same standard equipement level here and in Germany. The German price $32,178 the US price $43,000 a 34% price increase. The article also cited some BMW models. They also quoted some automobile executives which said that the profits thr German makers have in the US operations must dwarf the german operations on a per car basis. The reasons for this are simple. In 1980 the dollar was worth about 1.7 marks while today it is worth about 2.6 marks a 53% increase. As the mark got weaker the German car companies found that the sales of status cars did not drop off, so why lower the price here in the US when they will sell just as well as they have in the past. How to get around this?? Contact one of the companies here that specializes in delivery of a US version car in Europe. The cars you take delivery of there in this kind of a deal is always the US bound Export version. So its identical to what you by here. You can typically save 20% in the deal under US list. Some of the savings comes from the import duty you will pay on the car when you bring it back since it is used from driving around Europe on your vacation. The rest of the savings comes from the reasons I cited above. In addition the company which arranges this makes a healthy profit.