I know where I will not be buying my next vehicle.

The BBQ Pit
1

An open letter to Toyota, Honda, Bombardier, and other vehicle manufacturers.
Thank you very much for making the decision about which vehicle to buy very easy. There are plenty of choices available for anyone looking to buy a new car, motorcycle, or snowmobile, and your three companies have done an admirable job in removing yourselves from consideration. Specifically, from my consideration when it comes time to buy a new vehicle.

The decision to hamstring Canadians who wish to take advantage of a strong dollar by purchasing vehicles in the United States is despicable and extremely short-sighted. Shame on Bombardier for telling dealers in the U.S. that snowmobiles and ATVs cannot be sold to Canadians. Shame on Toyota and Honda for the farce that cars sold in the U.S. are not safe to drive in Canada. Shame on any manufacturer that refuses to honour its warranty because the owner bought a car in a different country. Shame on any motorcycle maker that has predatory price differentials.

I do understand that cars and motorcycles are big ticket items, and that by losing sales in Canada, you’ll be losing money. I do understand that vehicle prices in the U.S. are among the cheapest in the world, and that when you set prices in Canada, you look at the worldwide average. I also know that by leasing vehicles to customers, you have set yourselves up with some unforeseen financial consequences.

But you should understand that as a Canadian, I’m not going to price-compare any item to what it costs in Europe. As a Canadian, the only other market that matters in the U.S. Cross-border shopping is a long tradition, especially since most Canadians can drive to the U.S. in a few hours, and it’s only natural that as the Canadian dollar strengthens, and the price differential between the two countries grow, that it’s just going to make sense to head south to shop.

Your decision to impede Canadians in their desire to buy a cheaper vehicle is a huge mistake, and I hope it comes back to haunt you. I was not planning to buy a new vehicle this year or next, but I now know I will NOT be entering a Toyota, Honda or Bombardier dealership when it is time for me to buy a new car or motorcycle. No matter how safe, or fuel-efficient or well-rated your fleet, I will not be buying. I will go so far as to say that on my current Toyota car, I will never again visit the dealership for servicing, and if any parts should need replacing, I will ask my independent mechanic to use non-OEM parts whenever possible.

You are treating the Canadian public with contempt. We will remember.

2

That is completely fucked up. I hope they all get their asses handed to them.

What if you had an “agent” buy it in the US, get it registered here, then “give” it to you. Would you be able to get around the restrictions that way?

3

Why aren’t American cars safe to drive in Canada?

4

I just compared the CDN vs US prices on the 2008 Ford Escape XLT 4WD 3.0 litre, and I am feeling more than a little ripped off right now.
$28,999 CDN vs $24,485 USD. How can that make sense?

“I also know that by leasing vehicles to customers, you have set yourselves up with some unforeseen financial consequences.”
What does that mean? It reads to me that the car purchaser is subsidizing the car leaser, if that is true, I am even more pissed off now :frowning:

They don’t have daytime running lights. Which can be installed for a few hundred dollars. I am not aware of anything else that would be unsafe.

5

How odd. I just read the linked article and it says nothing about safety. It does go on about some bureaucratic snafu that seems to be related to some “compulsory anti-theft device”.

They must have forgotten to mention that in the article.

6

My 1998 Chevrolet Metro has DRL. I bought the thing in California and it’s still there.

7

I know that child safety requirements have been different (at least in the past) – we special-ordered a Canadian car seat anchor for our American Subaru when we were having trouble getting a good fit.

8

My phrasing was too absolute. DRL is obviously not mandated everywhere in the U.S., I know people who have recently purchased vehicles in the states and they had to have DRL installed and change the speedometer to show kilometers instead of miles.

I was unaware of the child restraint differences.

9

I just bought a new Toyota (assembled in Japan) that has daytime running lights (DRL). My previous Mitsubishi (assembled in Illinois) also had DRL.

This could be an attempt to get Canadians to purchase vehicles at higher prices in Canada. The article certainly slants in this direction.

Or it could be that the cars, which are self-certified, really don’t meet Canadian standards. If these cars, for whatever reasons, don’t comply to Canadian regulations while complying to U.S. regulations, it makes perfect sense for the manufacturer not to sell to Canadians, who would be in the bind that Mr. Robert Lamb is…he has a car not certified for Canadian roads. We don’t know why it isn’t certified, we don’t know why the certification was pulled after the fact, we just know the end result. Without details, I’m not going to automatically label the manufacturers evil. They could be, but my knee doesn’t jerk easily.

10

Whether it be child restraints, DRL, or odometer changes, it sounds to me like something the manufacturer is hanging his technical hat on in order to screw the consumer.

How incredibly short-sighted.

11

My knee will. Canadians are used to our vehicles costing thousands more than our neighbors to the south. We could swallow that when the CDN dollar was worth 60 - 70% of our neighbor’s dollar. Now that we are sitting at a few percent higher we are to accept that the cost difference is due to differing regulations? That is too large of a pill.

12

Toyota and Honda are not alone in this. Pretty much all the manufacturers are doing the same thing, as their dealers are all losing money. If they haven’t already started, they will soon.
Here’s a list of price differentials for the various makes. A BMW 550i lists for $58K in the US, and $82k in Canada.

A while back one of the Canadian dopers here was looking to buy a car, and I was roundly ridiculed when I suggested that she look in the US - I guess that option is no longer going to be available, in any case.

Car dealers and real estate agents are always going to have the government and media in their pockets. That’s just the nature of their business.

13

There are no significant differences between U.S. and Canadian vehicles. The speedometer is different, but that’s about it.
Manufacturers are now hiding behind this anti-theft ‘safety’ canard to tell the government their vehicles aren’t permissible to be used in Canada.

Basically, they’re admitting to creating an inferior product rather than lose money by selling a vehicle in the U.S.

14

BTW, daytime running lights are pretty ubiquitous on mid-to-high end cars right now in the States. They aren’t terribly common on low-end cars, but some have them. I’m not really sure they help, honestly.

15

Most of the 2008 vehicles (from all makes) that are now illegal to import into Canada are illegal on the basis that their immobilizers do no meet Canadian standards. The DRL was never an issue because it costs less than $100 to fit one, and Transport Canada specifically allowed one to do so.

  1. The immobilizers are there to keep the vehicle from running in case of a break-in. It is the aforementioned anti-theft device and there is NO safety aspect involved at all.

  2. There’s nothing new here, if one looks on the RIV admissability list, prior to 2008, most car models were importable. The inmobilizer was not an issue because, I suspect, Canadian and US vehicles used the same damn unit.

  3. Because the immobilizer is a part of the ECU, it was a simple case for the manufacturers to swap in a different chip at the factory. The cost to them to make these cars suddenly “unsafe” for Canadian roads is almost zero.

  4. Because we are dealing with the ECU and engine electronics, there is generally no cheap and easy way to change what the car came with, if the manufacturer doesn’t want you to. In any case, I’m not sure if that’s even an issue, since Transport Canada requires the manufacturers to certify the vehicles, so any third party work is going to be an exercise in futility.

Mercedes Benz has, for a long time, hung their hat on this by not explicitly “certifying” any of their vehicles, for Canada, and simply saying “see your Mercedes dealer to explore the possibility of certification”. So while they haven’t categorically ruled it out, people who try to import a MB vehicle are essentially at the mercy of their dealers. If the dealer refuses to issue the certification letter, for whatever reason, within a fairly short amount of time, the car is either sold back across the border or seized. I know US immigrants who have brought their used Mercedes up here and had them modified without too much trouble, as this doesn’t cut into the profits of MB Canada, but I know of NO ONE who has done this for a new one, and I hang with a group of car enthusiasts who know the law much better than I do. the MB S Class lists for over $30k more in Canada than the US.

So basically, all this is a completely naked and undisguised “Fuck you” from the collective car industry to Canadian consumers. And I guess all those Liberal government subsidies to Bombardier hasn’t netted the taxpayer much of a return, either.

16

Are there any taxes built into the Canadian prices? It’d kinda suck if Canadian dealers were losing business to American dealers on the basis of taxes, when that’s outside of their control, not money they’re getting anyway, and money the Canadians should be being charged when they import the car.

17

All Canadian sales taxes are charged on privately imported US cars at the border. There is no difference.

Actually, now that I’ve jogged my memory a bit, I know of one guy who managed to get his Mercedes over. Mercedes Canada agreed to give him a “safe for Canada” bumper. The total cost was something like $10k, and he ended up saving very little money.

But at least now his bumper is “safe for Canada”. :rolleyes:

18

I’m sure they help.

I came thisclose to sideswiping a silver-grey Porsche while driving in a silver-grey mist on the Pulaski Skyway one day. I wanted to get into the right lane. I checked my right mirror. All clear. I glanced over my shoulder. All clear. But since I find driving on the Pulaski Skyway inherently terrifying, I took another look. And I saw a…shadow or something. I looked again, for a longer time…and sure enough, there was this low-slung silver Porsche driving along in my blind spot with no lights on! :eek: In those conditions, the car was all but invisible!!! Daytime running lights would have rendered the care much more visible.

19

Flipping on the light switch is free.

20

We had ths sort of thing in the UK for many decades, and the price differance between cars sold in Europe and the UK was usually over 30% and quite often rather more.

The manufacturers would claim that buidling right hand drive cars for the UK market puhsed up the costs, but the lie of it was that most cars were designed such that installation of left or right hand drive was a fairly easy matter in the construction phase, this helps keeps production costs down.

The lie continued but many cars built in left hand drive were actually made in the UK and exported to Europe.

A grey market emerged that had its origins in British military forces serving in Germany. Those personnel would buy a car to UK spec, but at European prices, those prices were hugely lower than the UK.

Others saw an opportunity and offered cars to UK spec and sold them near to the main ferry ports, to UK travellers.
Again, the differance in cost was huge.

The manufacturers then tried to skip out of warranty obligations, but court cases proved this was an unlawful restriction of trade.

The manufacturers tried to use safety as a defence in this case, but this defence fell apart in court as well, since European safety standards apply to the UK too.

There followed a series of leaks and videos from former motor trade staff which proved beyond doubt that the whole thing, including the system of exclusive dealer networks was a cartel, the dealers were instructed to sell cars at certain prices for fear of losing their supply, this behaviour coupled with unlawful pressure on others wanting to sell differant cars by differant manufactuers from the same forecourt, convinced the courts that this was anti-competitive behaviour.

The manufactureers were then compelled to sell their products to any person wishing to buy them and that those prices could not very between purchasers more than a certain amount.

The result in the UK is that the real value of cars relative to incomes has fallen, by…30% and more.

Its a bit of a drawn out post, but it shows just how dishonest the motor manufacturers are.

Here are some articles, look at the dates of them,some things have changed,

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19990710/ai_n14255139

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20040307/ai_n12889359

http://www.all-car-imports.co.uk/rip_off_britain.htm

The manufacturers still try to find ways around the law, the money in breaking it is huge, but now there are plenty of companies that will import a car for you and do all the paperwork, chrge a few hundred and still save you several thousands, the manufacturers hate it, but they have been compeeled by EU competition law to supply those cars to whomever wants to buy them.

All it takes is a public mood, and an organised campaign, cars evoke passions in people that makes them quite prepared to do what it takes to ensure the rip-off merchants face their losing day in court.