New car?

[T1 Terry]

Gordon just sent me this link to a news article regarding stockpiles of unsold cars, no wonder the Aussie makers shut up shop here. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-1 ... ars-go-die

[pet-els]

Terry,
Will they put a new compliance plate and resell them or straight to the junk shop or cancel the rego on any vehicle over five years old. Thus people would have to buy a new vehicle.

PeterH

[shonky]

Hi, all.

Start a fire somewhere then lodge a really big insurance claim...

[T1 Terry]

Terry,
Will they put a new compliance plate and resell them or straight to the junk shop or cancel the rego on any vehicle over five years old. Thus people would have to buy a new vehicle.

PeterH

The send to recompliance of 5 yr old vehicles is what happens in Japan for a guaranteed market for their vehicle industry. Maybe not a bad one after looking at that level of dependence on vehicle manufacture. No doubt the respective govt financially support the vehicle manufacturers so the cycle remains. it would certainly stimulate car sales, damage the vehicle service industry to an extent, and clear dodgie vehicles from the roads. To keep a vehicle older than 5 yrs would keep the better mechanical repair shops in business and virtually wipe out the modified vehicle industry as far as older vehicles, it would be all late model hotted up vehicles then, so another constant turn over business would develop. The older now unregistered vehicles would go to the crusher for recycling building up that business but shattering the wrecking business.
It would take vehicles away from those who really couldn’t afford to own one in the first place, so the road congestion would easy, but the pressure on public transport would rise rapidly. I can’t see it happening in Aust, but overseas????

[SteveW]

If you go to any Australian shipping port after 1 or 2 car transport ships have unloaded you will see cars stored like that. Australia sells about 1,000,000 cars per year - they are all stored for a period of time. There are several major parking lots in all capital cities. I don't think those images are particularly unusual.

[RussellB[SA]]

Mine came from a parking lot near the wharfs at Port Adelaide. It was brand new, a "demo" mode with 0kms on the clock. Built in 2013, compliance plate shows 2014. The dealer had trouble storing cars due to remodelling display building. They pay so much per day per vehicle so its fairly cheap to leave them on the wharf.

Russell

[Greynomad]

My economics lecturer explained that theoretically, the ideal economy would be one where all the factories were lined up on the edge of a cliff, running 24 hrs, with the product exit over the cliff.

Full employment and full production would be maintained, and no-one would be worried about product depreciation.
(O'course, there was a lot more to his theory, but none of us heard it over the laughter.)

[John M]

Mine came from a parking lot near the wharfs at Port Adelaide. It was brand new, a "demo" mode with 0kms on the clock. Built in 2013, compliance plate shows 2014. The dealer had trouble storing cars due to remodelling display building. They pay so much per day per vehicle so its fairly cheap to leave them on the wharf.

Russell

Another factor is that while they are in "Bond" they do not pay the taxes, excises and other Government charges while they are there, so in fact the storage cost is often less than the interest earned on those unpaid taxes.

[T1 Terry]

Maybe this will clear the backlog http://www.businessspectator.com.au/new ... ly&modapt=

[aussiegirl]

When I worked at Mitsi's, at the height of it's production, we were making about 380 cars per day, so that works out to about 18,200 cars a year because we used to shut down for 4 weeks annual leave each year. We often wondered who the heck was buying them all. We sort of worked out that the average person would buy a new car, if they were lucky enough to be able to buy one, about every 5 years.It still doesn't account for all the other vehicles made by the other big manufacturers that were producing at the same time, Holden, Ford, Toyota, Nissan who were producing similar, if not more amounts of vehicles per day. I know at one time, the plant was chocka block with vehicles, we had them stored all over the place. The usual areas outside the factory where they were stored prior to shipment was full so they started using the oval area where we held our Christmas picnics. The company covered the chainwire fence with lengths of shadecloth so that you couldn't see the vehicle from South Road. They also had some stored down at Port Adelaide in a big lot and even had them stored at some of the old drive-in sites around Adelaide, before those sites were sold off.

As for a vehicle being built in one year and showing a different year on the compliance plate, this is nothing unusual. The compliance plate is not fitted to a vehicle until it is driven off the production line, it is one of the last processes done, other than final inspection. So if a car is put onto the production line, just before the Christmas shutdown, it will legally have been built in lets say 2014, but it can take a week to go from body build, where the vin numbers are stamped onto the firewall, through the paintshop processes and onto the production line, so it can take anywhere up to 3 weeks from start to finish. So if that car was sitting anywhere on the production line, just before a Christmas breakup, it will not get it's compliance plate until production recommences in the new year, therefore it can be a 2014 vehicle with a 2015 compliance plate, it is the date the vehicle comes off the production line that is registered as the date of manufacture.

I am not sure how your vehicle came to have 0 km on the speedo Russell B, that doesn't make sense. Most cars are driven off the production line and then taken around the factory to either a rattle test track (Mitsi's had one in the factory grounds) where the car is driven over a ramp to test the transmission, over corrugations to check for rattles, loose bolts, dropped screws in doors etc, then over a skid plate to check the brakes and finally driven up to 100 km in a short stretch and then returned, then the car is taken in for water test, another test where the car is taken up to 100 km an hour on a roller system (Dyno check), wheel alignment, headlight adjustment etc. All these test clock up milage. If there were any problems with any of these tests, the car would be driven to the rectification area. Eventually it was then driven out into the yard and parked awaiting dispatch. Every vehicle we made ended up with between 3 and 5 kilometres on the clock, some even went as high as 7km.