Changnoi1;278380 wrote: Tony,
You might be right about the price & finance but on the other hand look how good the CBR's (150 & 250) are selling .... a big selling point must be the price.
What kind of bikes (and cars) we can legally (and within an reasonable price range) buy is controlled by laws setup by family-clans that produce bikes & cars in Thailand. That is what I call "mafia controlled".
And yes the market is changing, but still very controlled by a very small group of people.
Chang Noi
The market IS changing, and it's changing FAST!
I have a mate who's pretty upset with Ducati, Thailand right now because he bought a Diavel Carbon 4-5 months ago at an eye-watering price, yet now you can buy the exact same bike, manufactured in Thailand for about 400,000 baht less! OUCH! :crazy:
That's pretty low of Ducati to sell the pricey import when they KNOW full well that the same bike will soon be available at a much lower price.
Suddenly my friend's Diavel has lost more than 400,000 baht in re-sale value. He actually seems to be taking it quite well, all things considered. I would be pretty livid.
Bottom line, vehicles made in Thailand will always be cheaper than imports.
I don't see how that's a "mafia" issue or even how it's controlled by any of the big families in Thailand- it's simply national policy to tax imports. In that respect Thailand isn't very different from most other developing nations that tax imports to protect and promote their domestic manufacturers and domestically produced products.
Going forward as Thailand enters in to more and more free trade agreements with trading partners around the world we will slowly but surely see a reduction in duties and taxes on imported goods. The Free Trade Agreement with Japan has already greatly reduced the amount of tax paid on Japanese vehicles. But we don't see that reflected in the prices of imported Japanese goods because the Yen keeps getting stronger and erases any savings we might expect from the reduction in import tax.
The strong Japanese Yen is also a big motivating factor in Japan's push to move more industrial production to lower cost countries. The sky high Yen means that many goods produced in Japan simply aren't competitive on the global market anymore.
