ByteIt

I looked at an MX5 SP and really, you've got a fast car that handles well, but has no "luxuries". The car is quite "cheap" looking, if you know what I mean. Plus the turbo has an annoying shut off valve set up. I think the boys (and girls) at MOTOR have a real thing against Japanese cars being as expensive as Euro cars.

How dare the Japs charge the same as the Euros?!!


That's usually the impression I get when I read MOTOR.

Just my $0.02

2kturkey

This is not the least bit odd. You will find that the relative price of any car in Australia (in Aus dollar terms) is 2 1/2 the US equivalent. The only cars this doesn't apply to iare locally manufactured vehicles (e.g. Camry) or a few odd exceptions like the MX5 and WRX.

Try comparing equivalent prices for BMW, Porker and Mercedes. You'll see that the S2k is a relative bargain by comparison with Aus multiplier over US on those vehicles.

RedRover

Well, at $0.53c conversion rate US$30,000 is Aus $56,603 to start with.

When the Federal budget comes out soon (next Tuesday?) we will have some exact figures to see exactly how much we are paying for import duty on motor vehicles.

We already know how many new vehicles are sold each year and we know approx how many people are employed in vehicle manufacturing. You can probably double that number in order to include people who work in suppliers to the local manufacturers.

The theory of import duty is that it is there to protect the jobs of local Australians.

In a normal year the Australian market might be 600,000 to 700,000 new vehicles. This year is forecast to set a new record of 800,000 units. Of these, approx 30% might be imported, say 200,000 units.

There are less than 50,000 direct employees and if we allow for suppliers you could say there were 100,000 jobs involved.

What we need to do is to divide the budget figure for import duty by the number of employees to see how much we are paying to protect each job. It will be interesting to see the exact figures.

Another way of looking at it is to say that the local Manufacturers are Ford, General Motors, Toyota & Mitsubishi. These are 4 of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world. Who do they need protection from?

Iggy_Type_R

This is funny stuff

So now it has a "high performance wing" and chrome wheels... so it should go faster right?

DavidM

Some other info of interest from the same issue of Motor ... they have a comparo of a CV6 and a Raliant Magna (180kW). Interesting to see that the Ralian Magna returned similar figures to the S2000 (in particular when looking at the 0-100kph and 400m times):
- 0-60kph = 3.53
- 0-100kph = 7.19
- 0-130kph = 11.22
- 400m = 15.26@154.7kph

That's very close to the S2000 figures and they beat the S2000 with the Magna to 60kph.

Though, I noticed something of interest when looking over these S2000 and MX5 SP acceleration figures. The two cars are very much even upto 30kph, but then in the time it takes the S2000 to climb from 30kph to 50kph, the MX5-SP reaches 60mph (ie. 10kph above the S2000). Then the two cars stay very much even to 130kph (which is as far as the figures go). So that means that the MX5-SP and the S2000 were pretty much even except for the 30 - 50kph increment which is where the S2000 lost huge amounts of time - while the S2000 managed to climb 20kph, the MX5-SP managed to climb 30kph (that's 1/3 more acceleration there). So it looks like this is what the jurno's did with the S2000:
- Launch it from revs high enough to spin the wheels off the line, but low enogh for the tyres to regain grip at about 3500rpm. So while the tyres are spinning, the car is keeping up with the MX5-SP (for the first 1.5secs).
- At somewhere close to 30kph the tyres grip, the tacho drops to about 3500rpm. Meanwhile the MX-5 is merrily still probably spinning the tyres and shooting off into the distance.
- It takes about 1.5secs to back into VTEC, but the S2000 is not not even remotly keeping up with the MX5-SP untill the tacho is showing 6500rpm. When the 6500rpm is finally showing, the MX-5 SP is already travelling at 60kph while the S2000 is managing only 50kph.
- Once above 6500rpm the car stays even with the MX5-SP through the whole 2nd gear and through the 3rd as far as the figures show (130kph).

Incredible how much speed they lost in the S2000 in the 30-50kph increment ... it's enough for the Magna to get ahead and keep on pulling away untill the S2000 (as well as the Magna) reaches 100kph. Only after that it start catching the Magna and barelly passes it before the 400m mark - it beat it by measly 0.15sec which is equeal to 6.4m at the speed according to their trap speeds ... that is 1.5 car lenght.

DC2SpecR

Havent been putting so much attention to MOTOR magazines after I found out how they tested my cars, they are just a bunch of gay hahahah...... TRUST ME, these guys told me they felt sinfull to rev my car to 9000rpm, wtf?

EG6SiR

I think this way of looking at it can be misleading; if the leading manufacturers did not face import tariffs then it would be more efficient for them to produce in markets of low labour costs then export to Australia. The big 4 have circumvented the tariffs by opening local plants. The other manufacturers e.g. Honda, VW, PSA, have to import their vehicles and are at a substantial disadvantage to compete in the Australian market. Only the big OEMs can afford to open a factory locally.

But you're right that they don't need the protection they're getting but no tariffs would mean no local factories. To reach an efficient scale for a single factory, a large number of vehicles must be produced -- more that the local demand. This creates jobs etc. in Australia instead of in some other country and also helps with balance of trade (blah blah blah). It just so happens that the gov't makes money on it as well, by taxing purchasers of imports!

RedRover

Well, The Age lists customs duty for 2002-2003 as $5094M and the Fin Review lists it as $4690M. At least one of them must be wrong!

Anyway, for the sake of our argument lets say it's approx $5000M. Not all of this will be for motor vehicles (I couldn't find any further breakdown) but a reasonable estimate might be 35% which would place it around $1750M

Thus this means that the average import duty per car is around $8750 and that the protection figure for each direct job in the auto construction industry is $35,000. If you take into account the indirect supporting industry workers this comes down to $17,500 per job.

I was also surprised to see that The Australian, The Age & the Fin Review all had differing figures for income tax. Anyway, if we say it's approx $80,000M and that there are approx 8,750,000 people in the workforce then that is an average income tax paid of $9142.

Mugen_R

MOTORs are GAY!

If you honnestly were there when MOTORs did the review with DC2#309's car along with the MY01 and S15, you'd laugh.

If only you saw how the guy launched with the S15, it was like a traffic light start and when the car moved, he'd punch it.

It was soo lame... though he did good with the WRX. Being it was AWD. Rev and launch!

I don't wanna type anymore because they arn't worth talking about! and the fact that it's home time! i'm GETTING OUT OF HERE! love fridays!

EG6SiR

Hey Mugen_R, you're getting confused with Honda-Tech! Here, he's DC2SpecR!