VAT is charged on everything in Germany, no matter its country of origin. I don't get this argument on how VAT makes American cars more expensive. It's 19% on everything.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
It helps living in a country where the road widths aren't determined by the width of an ox cart.

I was thinking the same.

It would be a whole lot easier to go through a back alley in a Fiat Panda than it would a Dodge Viper ACR.

Although I think fewer people would notice the Panda.

VAT is the abbreviation for value added tax. It is the European counterpart to the sales tax in America. As already mentioned, it is levied on all goods sold to end consumers in the EU, not just in Germany. VAT is also levied in the UK, which is not an EU member state. In the USA it is levied by the states.
VAT as an argument for an export barrier is a smokescreen.

quote:

Why don't Europeans buy America cars?

Why don't Americans buy America cars?
1. Lack of quality.
2. Boring/plastic interiors - poor style
3. Maintenance and reliability.

Outside of pickup trucks or muscle cars - not much to be attracted to.

quote:

Originally posted by sgalczyn:

Why don't Americans buy America cars?

3. Maintenance and reliability.

I've owned half-a-dozen European cars over the years, and a few American cars and one American truck.

Maintenance and reliability are, hands-down, the strong point to the Americans. Every European car had issues with reliability and, other than a 1974 Fiat, maintenance costs were outrageous.

I used to tell friends who were considering European cars that they should compare to US equivalents that cost at least 30% more to compensate.

The Japanese car companies learned this early on. By the time they were exporting to the US, their cars were even more reliable than ours, but sized by European standards, and that's how they made inroads here.

What I wouldn't give to have a new Datsun 510 right now!

quote:

Originally posted by newtoSig765:

I've owned half-a-dozen European cars over the years, and a few American cars and one American truck.

Maintenance and reliability are, hands-down, the strong point to the Americans. Every European car had issues with reliability and... maintenance costs were outrageous.

Good point. Our friends at Audi had the great idea of designing an engine with four timing chains at the back of the engine. That would be reason enough to not buy the car in itself.

Early in the 1974 oil shortage crisis, my soon-to-be father in law asked me for advice on cars that got good fuel mileage. I opened the current issue of Road & Track to their road test monthly summary, which had the Audi Fox at the top, and told him to look at next-best because of Audi's famously weak transmissions and carburetion systems.

He went with the Audi. Within months, he had carb issues and the car stuck in first gear on a trip from Minnesota to Illinois. He limped it to a dealership in Rockford, I think, at 30 mph on the Interstate, where the car sat for a couple weeks waiting for parts.

I should say, the Fox handled quite noticeably better than my MGB and got really good mileage. Fuel mileage, that is, not stop-to-fix-it mileage.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by OTD:
VAT is the abbreviation for value added tax. It is the European counterpart to the sales tax in America. As already mentioned, it is levied on all goods sold to end consumers in the EU, not just in Germany. VAT is also levied in the UK, which is not an EU member state. In the USA it is levied by the states.
VAT as an argument for an export barrier is a smokescreen.[/

The last time we were in Germany, and bought things to bring back, you can go to a special booth at the airport, present your receipts, and they will refund the VAT tax back to you

quote:

Originally posted by newtoSig765:

other than a 1974 Fiat, maintenance costs were outrageous.

That's funny. As in "ha ha" funny. My wife hae a 1974 FIAT. Driving along, nothing out of the ordinary going on, and the rear window decided to spontaneously dissolve into hundreds (thousands?) of little pebbles of glass. No, the rear window heater / defroster was NOT turned on.

I believe it!

Curious, was her car a 124 Special TC like mine, a 128, or a 124 Spyder Coupe? I think those were the only cars they made with a rear window.

My 124 Special TC was my favorite vehicle of all I owned, more even than my Mercedes 300E.

When I was in Germany, I frequented the wrecking yards for vintage VW parts to send home.
They had STACKS of American cars with blown up engines or just plain destroyed.
I saw stacks of early 80's Camaros and Chevy Chevettes and Fox body Mustangs.
Just stacked 5 or 6 high. Rows of them.
Granted there were Opals, VWs and BLWS there but I was blown away at the number of dead American cars.
They were mostly servicemens cars.

1976 I took my 1975 Dodge Ramcharger to Germany. It had the 440ci (7.2 liter) engine and a New Process 203 full time 4x4. Took 32 (120 liters) gallons of regular. Running on fumes, I stopped for gas at an Army Exchange gas station. We bought gas with coupons. I told the attendant to fill it up, gave the 100 liter stamp book to my wife and headed into the store to use the rest room and buy 1 quart of oil. Got back to the car, attendant was done, started up and headed home. Wife gave me the coupon book (100 liter) and there were coupons for 90 liters. Seems the attendant wasn't paying attention and when the pump rolled over at 99.99 liters it stopped fi.ling at 10 liters (actually 110 liters). Too far to drive back...

German friend traveled all over the continent hunting (deer, etc). He wanted to buy my Dodge, but the taxes and fees were ridiculously high, plus the 440 sucked gas like crazy (thankfully we had gas stammag. I transferred to Stuttgart while there I installed headers and a performance exhaust system (JC Whitney mail order) and improved to 13 mpg.

I never had any issues maneuvering in German, Swiss, Austrian or Italian roads or citys.

It has just occurred to me, as I eat my bacon sammidge here in sunny Cambridgeshire, that over here we DO buy American cars.

In one way.

General Motors is a US-based company?

Here in UK their product is called Vauxhall, and Europe-wide it's called Opel - plants are all over Europe and Scandinavia, with earnings in the billions.

Ford is a US-based company?

Here in UK their product is called Ford, and there are plants all over Europe and Scandinavia, with earnings in the billions.

Your Ford Edge SUV is also our Ford Edge SUV, and all that prevented us from changing to one last year was the shite service from our local main dealership, so bad it's legendary. We also get a decent number of Ranger pick-ups, bearing in mind that here a pickup is not a measure of dick-size but a necessity for farmers and those who NEED a pickup of some kind. I don't know of anybody who has one as a second or their 'fun' vehicle, nor do I know anybody who has a boat to tow. Fifth-wheel RVs are unheard of here anyhow.

Notwithstanding that, all the Japanese and Korean pickups predomoninate - VW [Navarra here] and Merc [re-badged Korean/Japanese something or other] coming a long way down the must-have list.

Tesla is an American company?

Well, I know very little about them except that there are LOADS of them around, many on fire like the one that caused a ten-mile tailback last Saturday when I was trying to get home. Norway has thousands of them due to the 50% tax relief on purchase. Here they are bought by people called Maxwell, Theo and Toby, who eat muesli and drink iced latte sprinkled with millet or some such shit.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by newtoSig765:

other than a 1974 Fiat, maintenance costs were outrageous.

That's funny. As in "ha ha" funny. My wife hae a 1974 FIAT. Driving along, nothing out of the ordinary going on, and the rear window decided to spontaneously dissolve into hundreds (thousands?) of little pebbles of glass. No, the rear window heater / defroster was NOT turned on.

My older brother had a FIAT. I remember it as a 124 Sport Coupe, but I may have that all wrong. Depending on the day, he either said it stood for Fix It Again Tony or Fix It All the Time. He did his own work, probably more on the FIAT than he did on the Model A he did a ground up restoration on.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
My wife had a 1974 FIAT.

My Dad had this tiny Fiat back around 1963 he used to commute for a short time driving from Santa Monica to Long Beach when Douglas moved to Long Beach airport (we subsequently moved to Long Beach). I don't know quite how he fit in it. My sister and I, in 4th and 3rd grades, were shoe-horned in the back. Good thing we were small at the time. I believe he traded in the Rambler American wagon, which had just enough power to get out of its own way.

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:
Ford is a US-based company?

Here in UK their product is called Ford, and there are plants all over Europe and Scandinavia, with earnings in the billions

Their Fiesta was a constant on the Euro Rally circuit, lot of kids clapping them-out with all manor of drift and rally decals. Was the most popular selling car in the UK during most of the 90's and a chuck into the 00's. Got discontinued for some EV.

quote:

Tesla is an American company?

Started by a guy named Elon...been in the news a bunch

quote:

Here they are bought by people called Maxwell, Theo and Toby, who eat muesli and drink iced latte sprinkled with millet or some such shit.

Does Nigel, Alistair and Barnaby still drive Range Rovers?

quote:

Originally posted by sgalczyn:

quote:

Why don't Europeans buy America cars?

Why don't Americans buy America cars?
1. Lack of quality.
2. Boring/plastic interiors - poor style
3. Maintenance and reliability.

Outside of pickup trucks or muscle cars - not much to be attracted to.

For me it’s

1. Build Quality
2. Reliability
3. Maintenance.

In that sense I’m going Japanese every time and prefer Japanese built. Japanese Manu but American built would be second preference.

Then a separate discussion would be what “I” want via daily driver (economy car), truck for “my” purposes, and my preferred version of a performance cars. All 3 = JDM and that’s what I own and will own. Then yet another discussion on motorcycles. I’ve never even got close to buying something non-Japanese. I own 8 vehicles. 5 of them built in Japan. 2 built in the USA, and 1 in Taiwan, but that’s a 125cc Scooter, and the factory it was built in is JDM spec in every sense. I’ve never had any attraction to anything domestic. But if I wanted or needed a full size domestic truck, I’d go USA every time.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by corsair: Started by a guy named Elon...been in the news a bunch.' [QUOTE/]

My question was a literal artefact, designed to follow on from the previous two comments.

Of course I know that Tesla is an American company, owned by the Afro-American Musk.

And yes, Range Rovers are still bought by people with countrified names, although the likes of the Aston Martin DBX, Bentley Bentayger, Lamborghini Urus and R-R Cullinan are becoming a lot more widespread now that any oik can have a half-way decent Range Rover for not a lot of money. In Autotrader ten minutes ago, I found just under 3000 between 20 and 20K£.

Tesla is an American company but they knew where to go to get their start. Mercedes used to own 10 percent of Tesla. Tesla unfortunately lets the customer find the problems that need to be fixed.

Car and Driver 2014

"Daimler has generously shared its engineering know-how with Tesla, and even a cursory look at the switchgear in the interior of the Model S reveals that Daimler’s input was significant, and there’s even more evidence below the skin. While Tesla’s big hatchback doesn’t live up to Mercedes standards in every way, it’s safe to assume that it wouldn’t have taken off in this form without input from Stuttgart."

"In 2017, Tesla acquired a medium-size German engineering firm named Grohmann Engineering that was working with many automakers to deploy automated manufacturing equipment.
A few months after the acquisition, Tesla started dropping all of Grohmann’s existing clients in order to have all hands on deck for the build-out of the Model 3 production lines."

"At a joint press conference in the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart in May 2009, Tesla said the partnership would "accelerate bringing our Tesla Model S to production and ensure that it is a superlative vehicle".


"For its part, Mercedes wanted to use Tesla's batteries to power an electric version of its compact Mercedes-Benz B-Class. The Tesla Model S would hit the road in 2012. An electric B-Class, arrived in showrooms two years later.
Despite having batteries supplied by Tesla, the Mercedes had a shorter operating range after Daimler engineers configured the B-class more conservatively to address their concerns about long-term battery degradation and the risk of overheating, a second Daimler staffer who worked on the joint projects told Reuters.

German engineers found that Tesla engineers had not done long-term stress tests on its battery.

"We had to devise our own programme of stress tests," the second Daimler engineer said.
Before starting production of a new car, Daimler engineers specify a "Lastenheft" - a blueprint laying out the properties of each component for suppliers. Significant changes cannot be made once the design is frozen.
"This is also the way you can guarantee that we will be profitable during mass production. Tesla was not as concerned about this aspect," the second Daimler source said.
Daimler's engineers suggested the underbody of the Model S needed reinforcing to prevent debris from the road puncturing a battery pack, the first Daimler engineer said.
To quash doubts about safety and security, following a series of battery fires, Tesla raised the ride height of its vehicles, using an over-the-air update, and a few months later, in March 2014, said it would add a triple underbody shield to new Model S cars and offered to retrofit existing cars."

I think one of the new EV Escalades would be a great “road trip through Europe” car…

Or a classic SRT Viper….