imcarthur

And THAT is what everybody forgets. We are a different country. We have historically had unique & separate distribution for most popular goods. The difference in retail pricing is the distributors profit margin & his extra cost of goods.

His margin has to be higher than the US because we have 1/10th of the population of the lard *** market to the south & therefore typically 1/10th the sales volume potential.

Higher services costs (the 1/10th again), higher taxation, Canadian advertising costs & the extra costs of selling in a bilingual market weigh into the cost of goods being escalated. And then there is the buying. With 1/10th of the volume do you really believe that we pay the same amount? Or get the same terms? And since we ship & get shipped less, that cost goes up too.

If we expect a similar price, then the Canadian distributor will have to disappear. At THAT point, we will cease being a distinct market.

I’ve lived this same scenario in consumer electronics. With the same pricing disparity & all of the same arguments. When the Canadian distributor ‘disappears’, the level of service usually plummets. As does any attention paid to the uniqueness of the Canadian market. We become a homogenized US market.

The real question is: Is this a bad thing?

I’d say short-term no. Long term yes. But we’re all going to be owned by China in the future anyway so who really cares about the long term.

Ian

njackett

Consumer electronics is different, their isnt any pricing disparity between the USA and Canada, and they do have different distributors. Vehicles shouldnt have any disparity either, I know we have a smaller market at about 1/10th, but still the amount of vehicles sold in canada is still plenty. Manufacturers are still making hundreds of millions of dollars in Canada. Tax doesnt matter to the msrp, it is added afterwards, the price disparity that people are complaining about is after tax prices its msrp prices. We know our taxes are higher, there is nothing we can do about that, but the disparity still exists in the msrp. I think Canada is at least entitled to at least 10-15% lower msrp's, which Porsche ironically enough already took the liberty of doing.

peritus

I'm getting a new (used) Audi A4 (I think), and after a quick analysis looking through Auto Trader Canada (Toronto) and Auto Trader USA (Buffalo), it would seem as though the US versions are ~66% of the Canadian prices. Not bad savings for an hours drive and some paperwork.