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Vladimir Ivanovich Kirillov
Prolific User
Username: soviet

Post Number: 202
Registered: 2-2013
Posted on Thursday, 16 April, 2015 - 07:17:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IP

Yes trendsetters, the ferret is out of the dark tunnel and dancing to a feverish bongo beat.

Since around the late 1940's Australian governments have forced Australians (not the rich of course) to buy Australian made cars by placing massive taxes (customs duties etc )on any fool who thought say a 1965 Buick Riviera had it all over a 1965 Holden Premier.(For those overseas gentlemen not conversant with the Holden standard let me just say that a Holden was closer to a Moskovich in build quality than to a Buick Riviera and had a fraction more luxury than the common lawnmower.)

Now 57 years later and just soon in 2017 the Australia government which has chucked countless millions of tax payers dollars into the coffers of Australian car manufacturers to prop up the industry over this plus half century, yes the government has put its grubby hand up to announce that in 2017 when the large international car manufacturers flee the shores of Oz like feral cat hunted flea infested rats, closing down all car manufacturing in Australia, we will (maybe) be allowed to purchase new cars from overseas without restriction.

Wow, did anybody get that ? Here we are in supposedly democratic capitalistic Australia being told that the government will allow us to by new cars overseas. This nothing to do with a government saying we have freedom of choice now.

No, this is about butt covering at the highest levels.

Well what were they going to do anyway? If there are no new cars being manufactured here just where were the new cars going to come from - Saturn perhaps ? Perhaps the Australian government had sent a fact finding mission to Cuba and decided we could become a Southern Hemisphere Havava type tourist angle just behind Pyongyang and the lad with the bad haircut.

Mind you the government isn't going to allow us to import used cars without restriction "for fear of tens of thousands of jobs that could be lost to second hand dealers". In other words if you want a good 1991 Lamborghini Diablo you can get one for around a hundred grand in Florida but you will pay $300,000 and up for one in Sydney.

Let's take a peek at the latest issue of a popular publication here called Just Cars (which I think should be renamed as Just Incredible Prices given the hunt for woodduck buyers that the sellers continually announce by their ever increasing ludicrous prices)

Oh great here's a 1970 Holden Brougham HT, (not original but heavily modified) a snap at $39,500. But here is a 1981 RR Silver Spirit for $16,960 close to half the price of the Holden. Now the Holden Brougham was Detroit's Joke of the Year on the Aussie.

The Brougham, a thing lower than any Chevrolet in the USA was touted unashameably by Holden as a luxury car. It was so hideously unluxury that its does not warrant any further criticism.

The RR Spirit was pure luxury. Go figure how the RR is now evidently worth nearly half the price of a mass produced joke that pretended to be a luxury car, even with the Rolls Royce being 11 years later model. I would say that if you could justify that with a logical explanation then you have a good chance at predicting which General in North Korea is getting liquidated next by the smiling communist fat boy with 6 cool billion USD tucked away in Chinese and Swiss bank accounts.