Food for thought on taxes
It's rarely a matter of tens of thousands of dollars. The same model can cost more than double or even up to three times as much in Australia.
In the most rarefied air of the luxury-car atmosphere, Britons can buy a Rolls-Royce Phantom limousine for the equivalent of $450,000; American buyers can waft along in the stately sedan for $373,000. In Australia, the Phantom costs millionaires more than a million: $1,068,000, to be precise.
Porsche's iconic 911 sports car starts here at $223,000. In Japan, its price tag converts to $134,000. Britain, $107,000. The US, ''just'' $77,200 - cheaper than HSV's Commodore-based GTS.
When Holden exported its Commodore SS to the US as the Pontiac G8 GT, it cost about $30,000, roughly $15,000 less than it costs here. What, how is that possible?
Zeta platform was developed here,
LS engine foreign
Gearbox foreign
Suspension foreign
Head unit/ GPS/driver display foreign
Braking systems foreign
The engineers here homogenize it for local use. I'm not convinced that the funds they receive are showing a good ROI. Export for our local vehicles are drying up, Camry is a global car, the hybrid system was already in use OS, yet they received 100M to develop a hybrid in OZ.
Holden gets 100M+ to build the cruze, a car that was already being produced in other markets.
I am for funding, don't get me wrong, but look back to when the government wanted a locally manufactured V8, put some money on the end of a stick and away they went. Today its a different story all together, what was the last totally locally developed and manufactured engine using no foreign parts?
As for building multiple vehicles on the same production line, it's not recent innovation, they have been doing this for years, anyway it's part of evolution of a company. Practices need to keep up with the times, remain efficient and effective. Why do they need so much funding anyway, latest report show GM as number 1 and Toyota number 3 for world wide sales, I don't know about you but over 9 million units sold and they can't afford to train their personnel or develop new products. Something's not right if you can shift that many cars and still be a dollar short.
Ford US is investing over 2 billion in retooling, training and production facilities, yet they need 60M+ form Australian tax payers to keep the falcon till 2016, It's clear where their loyalties are.
Dave