Frustrations of living in a country where car prices are ridiculous!

People who live in countries such as US, UAE, Great Britain, Germany, Japan and New Zealand enjoy cars as and when they wish because cars are just cheap! However in many other countries that slap ridiculous amounts of tax on cars the car lovers all suffer. All moan and groan about having to fork out substantially more than they should for cars. Countries such as Singapore where land area is very limited it is understandable why the Govt would slap heavy taxes on the cars as a means to control car population if not the country will juts become one massive car park.

Apart from Singapore countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil and Vietnam all slap massive taxes on cars often reaching as much as 300% making a simple car cost that would cost US$10,000 in US to well over US$30,000. To cap it all off the roads in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam are not exactly top notch. Even if the person had sufficient money to buy a nice sports car the road conditions would make it frustrating to drive on. Many of these countries have pot hole ridden roads and massive traffic problems. Public transportation is not efficient leading to many people needing to buy a car or motorcycle for transportation.

To top this all off race track facilities are also limited in these countries compared to those where cars are cheap. Japan, US, Germany and Great Britain has numerous race tracks scattered all over the country making it easy to get access to track driving. This in turn would push the motorsport industry forward as well as help develop the motoring industry as a whole.

The taxes collected from car sales have become such a huge tax revenue earner that these countries find it hard to do away with import taxes on cars. Malaysia for one has been postponing the call to reduce import taxes on cars for decades. Collecting over $2 billion annually is significant enough to justify continuing the imposition of this tax.  To make matters worse some even introduce Excise duty which typically is considered to be a form of tax on controlled goods such as cigarettes, liquor or some restricted item. The excise duty is just a way for the Govt to further increase their tax revenue through car sales.

Proton's collaboration with Suzuki

Proton started out in 1985 as a car maker that only knew how to assemble cars rather than build its own cars. It decided to try its hand at designing and building its own cars in 2000 and it failed miserably with the models being rough, poor fuel consumption, jerky and of low quality. Proton went back to assembling cars again with Mitsubishi and Honda. Now looks like Proton has given up on building its own cars and gone full steam with assembling cars with it recent collaboration with Suzuki.
From the images that have leaked out Proton is aiming at fighting Perodua head on with a Suzuki model that is similar in size with the Perodua Myvi. Proton's engineering team appears to be at least 15 years behind and can only retool their equipment to assemble cars. The design and development team seem to be lost and going the route of being an assembler rather than a proper car maker is definitely more suitable for Proton. Without the right expertise to develop its own cars it isn't so bad to be a car assembler.

Companies like Luxgen in Taiwan was a car assembling company which in the last 5 years decided to develop its own model. It took a while to gain acceptance but they took the knowledge they gained from assembling cars to develop their own in-house models. So far from what has been seen in motorshows and even reviews in Taiwan car magazines the Luxgen models are quickly catching up with the Korean car makers which is quite an achievement since its car building history is not every extensive. Unfortunately despite the long history that Proton has had, it has achieved practically nothing. They cannot compete on the international level and even in the domestic market it has fallen behind Honda and Toyota for sales volume. The walk towards the grave is getting shorter by the year for Proton. The Malaysian public cannot accept another bail out for Proton.