Conspiracy Free Zone.

Seems the world currently has an oversupply of cars.
Take a look at these pics...

Carmakers around the world are cutting production as inventories build up to unprecedented levels. Storage areas and docksides are now packed with vast expanses of unsold cars as demand slumps
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/gallery/2009/jan/16/unsold-cars?picture=341883529

http://static.guim.co.uk/Guardian/business/gallery/2009/jan/16/automotive/xsheerness-8359.jpg

Hot damn!

I'll have... that one.. and .. that one.. and...

Inside job.

Remember, we parked in the itchy lot.

so whats gonna happen?

When I was working for Toll carting cars out of Hamilton there were at least 450 of those Jumbuck utes that had been sitting there, under hailnets at Prix Car for 3 years. Marshall Batteries used to get called every 6 months or so to replace every single battery due to them just sitting there, unsold and undelivered. It started getting that way with Suzuki's as well, although nowhere near the numbers of Jumbucks.

you just need to look at the car lot near the airport. it's packed.

Cars will be free one day (or sold at a huge loss) and they will make their money on petroleum products (sort of like how consoles make their money with games)

fpot for an anti-truther you sure are an idiot.

waaaaaaaaaaittttttttttt..... you were an idiot from the start!

Cars will be free one day (or sold at a huge loss) and they will make their money on petroleum products (sort of like how consoles make their money with games)

or like how razor companies make money on their shavers.

by charging a f***-ton for the razor and also charging a f***-ton for the cartridges?

I guess other things must be starting to back up too.
Bikes.. trucks Vans

There was a bit in the Courier Mail about Whitegoods going up 20-30% because of the Aussie dollar. I guess Car Prices would need to climb. Although Aussie made cars wouldnt.
Do we still make Australian Cars ?

i thought our last car making joint in adelaide closed or had huge lay-offs a year or two ago.

Remember, we parked in the itchy lot.

10/10

Yeah well I was sort of joking Chickens*** but yeah nice try though.

we should all scrap our current cars and buy brand new ones to help support the economy.

particularly all the s*** ricer cars the people on here are obsessed with.

I'll buy one for a dollar.

i thought our last car making joint in adelaide closed or had huge lay-offs a year or two ago.

Uhh... Holden, Ford and Toyota all still make heaps of cars in Australia, including many that are exported to the Middle East, the US and other places. Pretty sure the only other major manufacturer stopped recently (Mitsubishi) and now fully imports, but could be wrong.

So our cars to export are now 30% cheaper overseas ?
thats got to be a good thing for the car industry ?

Indeed it is, and not just from an exporting point of view, but also from a competing with cheap imports one. They were pretty vocal about the negative effects of the strength of the AUD when it was getting close to 1:1 with the USD. Though I think it's only Holden that does any sort of major exporting the the US, and even then it isn't a big percentage of their exports.

a mate of mine used to move and pick car orders in lots like that.
sounded like a pain in the arse.

no wonder they cant sell cars, most of those cars are white


ugh

Someone buy my car, MY05 sti kgo

particularly all the s*** ricer cars the people on here are obsessed with.

nazi sleds for all

apparently nissan at moorooka has sold 12 new GTR's in the 6 odd months they have been selling them in australia ($140000 ea)

sorry infi, s*** ricer cars are here to stay

apparently nissan at moorooka has sold 12 new GTR's in the 6 odd months they have been selling them in australia ($140000 ea)

after tax+onroads I think they will be around the 170k.. With the crappy aussie dollar, it may be even higher... we'll see.. I havn't heard of anyone laying down $140k for a GTR, but a deposit then yeah..

for 140k it's a bargain
I'd still rather chip in a few more pennies and get the GT3, though

I'm doing my bit, heading down to Volkswagen on the weekend to test drive some new broom brooms.

i believe it was henry ford who said 'ill give you the car for free if you promise to buy the spare parts off me only'

See he knew that Fords break down all the time and he would have a constant stream of business.

Yeah, people forget that a low Aussie dollar is awesome for local businesses - exports sell more because they're more competitive overseas, and imports don't sell because they're more expensive (which also means local products sell more because they're more competitive locally).

However when you see photos like this, you can't help but think it's no wonder GM are going broke when they're over-producing by such large volumes.

its their own fault though, i have no sympathy for them
I don't get a bailout if i f*** up and can't pay my mortgage etc
why should they get a bailout if they f*** up and can't pay theirs

i hope motorcycle manufacturers are doing the same... i want cheaper bikes :D

why should they get a bailout if they f*** up and can't pay theirs

Possibly because it's a huge industry that has a big influence on the economy.

so the f*** what

make them declare & force them to sell their company to whomever can afford it
someone like BMW or Audi might step up and buy it if its cheap enough (which, it will be - because they dont have a choice)

bailing them out is saying its ok to keep doing what you've been doing
if they risk losing the entire company (and with that, their phat corporate wages/private jets etc), I'm sure they'll pay more attention

I spent years unloading car ships and you'd be suprised how quickly you can fill and empty a lot like the one in that picture. Some of the bigger car ships can carry around 7,000 cars. Although the most we used to unload here in Brisbane was between 1,200 - 1,400 and with the right number of drivers we could nail that in a single shift. So yeah you could fill a lot like that one pretty damn fast

Lonewolf I used to work for Patrick Stevedores down at Hamilton and and on Fisherman Island. I know Prix car pretty well over the space of ten years I probably dropped off a couple of thousand cars there myself. :)

reload! picking up cars from those places isn't that bad. Most of them are parked in rows relating to where they are going. So it's not like you have to go all over the place picking one from here and another from way over there.

As a side note I used to unload f*** loads of second hand Skylines, Supra's and the like a fairly high percentage of which were buckets of s***. They'd always come in on run down peices of crap ships that would take forever to unload because of the ships layout. Personally I would never buy one of those imports given what I have seen over the years.

onya ticcles!

i went to motorama at springwood, c#nts wouldnt budge much on prices.. all want their juicy commission. told em to stick it and bought a good 2nd hand (50ks on the clock) for half the price.

how much casa? how many ks?

Someone was telling me that Dealers prefer to sell the Finance side for profit and new cars at or near cost. They make their money by getting you into a finance deal.

And yet Ford Credit is bailing out of Australia, no wonder the dealers were so pissed and saying that they'd be selling Jap cars in the not too distant future instead...

That is true, if you negotiating with someone try and avoid telling them how you are going to pay until you have already got to a price. They are a lot less likely to go down if you aren't using their already established credit facilities.

Someone was telling me that Dealers prefer to sell the Finance side for profit and new cars at or near cost. They make their money by getting you into a finance deal.

depends, they can sell a car at cost if they know that the customer is going to service the car through them.. but thats rare that happens

Yeah Faceman my ex used to work for a finace broker that inturn covered a number of yards here in brisbane. There is a s*** load of money to be made just from signing people up the figures are the kinds of numbers that would pop your eye's put it that way.

The money was such though that a number of brokers she knew would dodgey up the paper work to ensure the deal went through thus picking up their bite. My personal advice gien what I have heard from her would be never ever get finance through a car yard. But I am sure most of you already knew not to do that.

Dealers don't give to much of a rats ass about ongoing crap like servicing. What they do love though is pushing s*** like window tinting and upgrading the cars they sell with soilers and rims ect because they can make a killing on that BS.

last edited by Taipan at 01:09:34 20/Jan/09

One of my tenants runs a used car yard $5k-$15k and he has been running his own car finance company to get the white trash into deals. Makes a s***load out of it, its a regular paycheck every week, and if they default just take the car back and sell it again.

What a racket.

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/1599/20081209thebailouts***tbr9.jpg
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/20081209thebailouts***tbr9.jpg/1/w468.png

so true

Could easily be said about GM Holden and Ford Australia too.

haha slaps, that poster cracks me up every time I see it. Most of the Americans I know think the bailout is f***ed, but I don't know any of the millions of people in the auto-industry, so they prolly have a different opinion. There was a cool thread on Slashdot the other day (can't remember what it was about) and it turned into a few Americans talking about the difference between American cars and foreign ones - almost without exception they slagged the American cars and just said they were cheap schlocky s*** compared to their Japanese equivalents, or whatever. I think most American cars are hideously ugly anyway, not to mention massively oversized, but that thread turned me off them fo life (except Trans Ams obviously, they're awesome)

haha that's awesome

i'm still struggling to understand, in this time of worry about climate change and the cost of petrol in the past 10 odd years. which bright spark at holden decided they needed a 7 litre engine.

they used that f***ing boat anchor of a 5 litre v8 for over a decade and managed to keep squeezing power out of it with each new generation, yet they seemed to have jumped almost 2 litres in displacement in the last decade since the introduction of the 5.7 litre v8 which in the VX commo back in like 2000ish

am i the only one that thinks this is totally retarded? especially while the euro's are pushing similar power from v8's with a fraction of the displacement.

no you're not the only one. in fact most of the media elite think it's retarded too. but politics is about winning the votes of people who work in the car industry.

pave you moron, displacement doesn't equal fuel usage.

also:

mercedes clk 63 amg black:
6.3L V8 373kw (standard amg = 350kw)
15.3L per 100km

HSV W427:
7.0L V8 375kw
17L per 100km

Jag XF:
4.2L V8 230kw
who cares per 100km

aston martin v8 vantage:
4.7L v8 315kw
who cares per 100km

this is holden we're talking about nf

Well I had that 5L in my VT SS (manual), the 5.7L in my Monaro (manual) and have the 6L in my SSV (auto) and the 6L is by far the most fuel efficient *when driven sensibly*.

True story!

can't really compare auto and manual

my boss has a VE SS and he said he gets up around 19L/100km around town but i think he's a bit of a lead foot off the lights etc but still.

can't really compare auto and manual

why not?

well you can, but in reality they are driven pretty differently..

auto's will always use less imo

Auto's use less?

That's crazy talk.

well you can, but in reality they are driven pretty differently..

auto's will always use less imo

generally more actually, due to the torque convertor. a lock up torque convertor + stupid amounts of gears helps newer transmissions though.

7 speed auto's and s***

Yeah fair call for the new super fancy ones.

you can buy 5- and 6-speed autos in the new commodores and falcons that beat the pants off manuals efficiency wise.

look up CVT Transmission videos on youtube.

CVT transmissions are old. Didn't x-trail have a cvt ?

you can buy 5- and 6-speed autos in the new commodores and falcons that beat the pants off manuals efficiency wise.

no they don't. they are basically identical. 100ml of petrol per 100k isn't exactly a pantsing.

($20 a year)

I get about 25L/100Km in my ford

I get about 25L/100Km in my ford

What you drive 100km's then sniff 10L of petrol ?

That's a big sig.

Thirsty mustangs...

67 fastback 390

im only guessing at the mpg but im sure its around there or higher

CVT transmissions are old. Didn't x-trail have a cvt ?

close, the murano does

nissan micra's have cvt

Pretty sure the xtrail in the last year or 2 had cvt ... yours may not have, and it may not now. But reviews like these suggest it was an option.

sig to big.

So what happens if a hail storm comes? Seriously... why would they put all the cars in the weather ...

ah yeh I forgot they had done a new model
nissan site says they have them

So what happens if a hail storm comes? Seriously... why would they put all the cars in the weather ...

Write them off. Claim insurance. Easier than selling them.

A shed that big would be quite costly I assume.

And considering this thread is about how there is a huge back log of cars, there probably isn't normally that many sitting in the lot.

The only cars that we used to get put under cover after being unloaded from the ships were the super expensive s*** or cars where there was some kind of deal going with the importer to protect them. Needless to say storage costs would of been a lot higher for the protection.

One of the things people never realized about the wharf and the s*** the stevedoring firms sotre is how much money they make doing it. Of course those cost eventually get passed onto the consumer.

Just a quick example for you. We had the boom from a drilling rig sitting in a corner of our yard for about a month. Now this thing was about 30 ft long by 4ft high 4ft wide. Patricks charged the company $14k for the 4 weeks of storage so it's pretty much a licence to print money. Storage of such things incur no real cost on the company storing them so it's money for nothing. Even when you get someone to load it on a truck it takes all of about 10 minutes to do so labor costs are not even worth a mention.

Just another little bit of info. Each and every car we would unload from a ships would cost the importer around $120 each and that is seperate from storage costs. Now when you consider that we could pull 1,200 off a ship (depending on the size of the ship) in a single shift thats a f*** load of cash for just 8 hours.