MarkZ

I call shotgun!!

Looking good Godcla, congrats again! I'm guessing you don't need a reply to the second PM now.... Since they're doing the pre-delivery, are they REALLY gonna make you wait till Tuesday??

Replied! =)

Went for a look at the red 35 at FTG Nissan today. The red is a significantly darker shade than what photos led me to believe! There was also a titanium, which again looked very different to what I thought (was expecting almost bronze).... more a grey with just a hint of colour in it, actually similar to the DMG/gunmetal colour. Red looked goood =) DMG looks goood too (saw at motorshow). Was quite surprised when told that the Aussie "Premium" gets the black edition interior (black w/ red inserts)! Looks great.

I see that I'm going to have to say it again. GTA said that they will not guess at a price at this stage, as they don't have compliance. Try asking them when they have someone to comply cars for them.

Been. Seen. Sat in it They said they don't have anyone to comply R35's for them (yet), so its pointless to try to guess a price. That and the LCT going up..... (thanks Ruddler ) The car is apparently here as an test vehicle (for compliance I take it), but since GTA aren't a workshop, its not clear to me what their intentions are.

What I'd love to see now is an official SAU letter getting published in Wheels or Motor Magazine for the whole world to see. Points to raise: - Australian Nissan fans eagerly await local availability of the R35. - Global pricing announced in many countries; however, where pricing hasn't been announced, Nissan are working very closely with target customers to provide information... except here. - Prospective owners who are tired of waiting for Nissan to get their act together have undertaken to obtain the car through alternate LEGAL means. - Ironically, Nissan Australia now seeks to punish the exact same consumer base who are intending to support this car in the market. - The ongoing alienation of the consumer base is due to Nissan's own failings to; (a) initiate the import approval process in a timely fashion, and (b), disclose information to the market. Not due to a veil of secrecy mind you, but due to a total lack of competence. They've issued a press release saying they've had 3,000 expressions of interest in the car (they're actually expressions of interest in having information like pricing and availability, so people can start planning their next purchase)...... and all they've managed to tell the market is "yes, err, we're getting the, um what's it called? oh, GTR, yes that's it.... we're definitely getting it.... we think". Not good enough!

What costs? Grey imports have to meet the same ADR's....... so do all the other low volume official imports where there's not many cars to spread these "costs". Typically meeting ADR's seems to involve adding side intrusion bars in doors (only an issue in fairly old imports), replacing the curved wing mirrors with flat ones (even though "factory" cars here have them thesedays) and maybe changing headlight globes. Oh, and singing a piece of paper. Can't forget that, that's the expensive part, right? Being global, the GTR has already had to meet NCAP and ENCAP (European NCAP) for occupant and pedestrian collision protection, and the latest tough Euro and US noise and pollution regs. And don't forget the tough US low-speed collision regs. Our regs are pretty much all based off of these.

Hear hear. I can even imagine the look on your face while you're there --> As I've posted elsewhere in this forum, a fair price would be $110-115,000. That's based on guesstimating the overseas pricing breakdown and understanding local taxation costs, which then imply that as low as $90,000 should be do-able (a la Canada). Furthermore, grey imports (if possible) would come in around $120-125,000 (after paying full price in Japan!) and also arrive 12 months earlier than from Nissan Aus. If Nissan can't sell you this car for a fair price and are unable to block the grey imports, then they cede control of the GTR brand to the importers. Please Nissan, use common sense! And hurry up, its not like Nissan Japan sprung this car on you by surprise!

Gary, that's why I compared us more to Canada. Shipping costs are a very small factor, and sales volumes are going to be tiny here as well as Canada.... and even in the USA. The USA allocation is what, 1,500 cars a year? So offsetting development costs against volume isn't worth mentioning. As this is a global car, they've engineered in all the hardware (heaters/coolers/whatever) up front for hot and cold climates. The only local development would be an ECU reflash for local fuel. You're seriously telling me they're going to double the price just for including local satnav? Did you see them do that in Canada? C'mon, surely its outsourced software anyway, with no work involved just a standard per-vehicle license fee. The software already exists and would already be running in any other Nissan with satnav. Floor plan finance? Stock holding cost? You really think Aussie dealers are going to have GTR's sitting waiting on the showroom floor? They'll be sold out 6 months in advance! Its pure cream, to quote a movie. Margins? Sure, they'll do low margin on high volume product in the US, but the GTR is low volume there as well as every other country. The pricing everywhere has been exceptionally reasonable. Why should we be the odd ones out? Now, being greedy with the price, that's a different story. How can a 911 here cost 3x what it does in the US? All that said, I'd honestly love to hear what your experiences of the car industry are. Seems to be a downhill slope at the moment. - Mark

Gary, I can't agree at all to those additonal costs with regard to my illustration. You've factored in $11,000 of extra costs plus a huge jump in combined dealer/Nissan corporate profit. Sure, these costs and overheads DO exist, but you have to include them within the figure I chose to call COST price above (which was a guess of $65,000). With those additions the cost becomes $76,000. So......... how could the car possibly sell for what is does in the USA ($75,000), Japan ($81,500), Canada ($89,300)...... oh, and don't forget "Rip-Off England" (55,000 GBP = $119,600). They all have taxes, fees, duties, shipping, insurance, markups, etc. No sir, it just doesn't add up. This is a global car at a global price. The differences in taxes between us and the above examples would land us somewhere in the middle there, realistically we should be coming in somewhere around the Canadian price. So IMHO, $110-115 is "a" right price, but I'm actually being generous to Nissan since $80-90k is obviously very very doable if they want to. - Mark

Thought I'd chip in here..... the sums above are waaaaay wrong, starting with the $90k figure. Furthermore import duty is 10% not 15%..... plus a bunch of other stuff, you'll see Here's my calc's, based on a Base model, RRP 7,770,000 Yen in Japan (currently ~81,500 AUD). WHAT IS THE COST PRICE? Nissan Australia will buy this car at manufacturing cost price plus an operating margin, but of course not at full Japanese dealer RRP. This is what I'm going to call the Nissan Aus COST price, which is a very important number to recognise since import duty is applied to the COST price, and affects the GST and LCT calcs. Let's guess a number, which I'm going to work out below. The RRP in the USA is ~70,000 USD (= 75,000 AUD) for the Base model, in Japan its 81,500 AUD and in Canada its ~82,000 CAD (= 89,300 AUD). Those sell prices include their local taxes, duties, and local Nissan dealer markup (or profit). I'm not familiar with those taxes, or profit margins, but logically Nissan Japan is selling the car to Nissan USA dealers for substantially less than 75,000 AUD. So let's use 65,000 AUD for argument's sake as the COST to Nissan USA, which should then be the same to Nissan Aus. IMHO its still probably way too high a number. I'm going to totally ignore shipping since Nissan has access to bulk shipping arrangements, and couldn't possibly be paying more than $1,000 to $1,500 per car. I mean, that's a container to you or me, right? ...and at most adds $2k to the final price below. TAXES INTO AUSTRALIA Import duty comes first. $65,000 x 10% = $6,500. So what I'd call the "landed" price is going to be $71,500. GST and LCT (luxury car tax) don't really matter at this stage. These get applied when you buy the car from the dealer, and any tax already paid by Nissan get subtracted from the the final amount. You don't pay GST on top of GST, or LCT on top of LCT... However, let's work these out anyway. GST = $71,500 x 10% = $7,150 LCT = ($71,500 + $7,150 - $57,123) x (10/11) x 25% = ~$4,900 NISSAN AUSTRALIA MARKUP AND SELL PRICE..... TO YOU! So far Nissan Aus has outlaid $65,000 + $6,500 + $7,150 + $4,900 = $83,550. But remember the car really only cost them $71,500, they pass on paying the GST and LCT to you. How much profit is fair or normal in the car industry? I can't answer that one but when I guessed the COST price based on the USA pricing, I only left 10k on the table for the USA dealer to make! Let's be generous and say $25,000 for the Aussie dealer. NOTE: if you want to INCREASE the dealer profit, then you have to remember to DECREASE the cost price Nissan pays for the car, due to what we know about the overseas pricing structure. GST and LCT get calculated again, based on a desired dealer sell price of $71,500 + $25,000 = $96,500. GST = $96,500 x 10% = $9,650 LCT = ($96,500 + $9,650 - $57,123) x (10/11) x 25% = $11,142 So the final sell price, to you, is $96,500 + $9,650 + $11,142 = $117,292 plus on-roads. NOWHERE NEAR THE $150k I KEEP HEARING! THE LAST WORD You can run the above numbers for yourself, using different cost prices and profit margins. If you want to INCREASE the local dealer profit, then you have to remember to DECREASE the cost price Nissan pays for the car. IMHO $110-115k is a fair price. Why? I worked out that if you grey import a Base model (with the Aussie dollar buying 95 Yen) and allowing a whopping $10,000 for compliance, you can have the car for $122,000. Even if the grey import path doesn't become available, it still demonstrates the local price of the car if you paid full dealer price in Japan and the consequently higher local taxes based on that price. A dealer car here HAS TO BE cheaper than importing it yourself... or else why do you need the local car company? I'd love a brand spanking new GTR, but its got to be at a fair price! I hope my thoughts are useful information to everyone here. - Mark

I'm now commuting on the Eastern Freeway daily, and I've seen a new smashed car (nothing too serious) EVERY day since mid last week!!! That's about 7 smashed cars. There was also what looked to be an offset head-on at the intersection of Springvale Rd and Burwood Hwy in peak hour yesterday. The front end of a red VT was caved in and the ambos were attending.... don't think it was so bad though, but the scene was quite crowded with emegency vehicles. mark

They look horn on a 32GTR.

Well, if you were paying $43,000 for a product that should cost a maximum of $1,300, I'd be expecting blindingly good service. That's like paying $80 for a Big Mac - if better be ****en good, but still no way you'd pay that much! Let's not forget the facts - * Victoria should be a much lower risk area that NSW for an insurer * A grey import 32GTR should cost pretty much the same as an Aussie delivered one for insurance (10-30% more sounds fair, right?)