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Quote:

Originally posted by bmorton

Sorry, I don't agree. The cost of living isn't as far apart as you say and in some ways it's more expensive to live here. The real reason for the price difference is that we buy proportionally more small cars than the Americans do and so automakers have to price their small cars to be attractive to cost-conscious Canadians. The car is priced to its target market, and in the US Mazda can charge more for the same car than they can get away with here.

BTW, the only SUVs built or planned to be built in Canada are the Honda Pilot/Acura MDX (Alliston) and the Toyota Highlander/Lexus RX300 (Cambridge).

You are right, got alliston/cambridge mixed up. But you are also only quoting fully assembled vehicles. Most of the assembly (up to 90% in some) of SUV's for the big three are pre assembled by magna. Places like Formet, Karmax, Polycon, Powerlasers all stamp, weld and preassemble body panels, frames, interiors, bumpers to be shipped to assembly plants. Some like the Lexus/Toyota, and Honda you mentioned are assembled fully in canada, but that is because Japanese manufacturers choose to do all pre assembly operations in house and not outsource.

Unfortunately on the cost of living we simply have to agree to disagree. Cost of living is for the most part set by the currency you are paid in when you are comparing across borders. You could not live in the states in the style to which you are accustomed if your wage was not adjusted for their currency. Pretty much everything in the states costs the same as it does here, just in american dollars, a coke cost $1, a protege costs 18,000 and a nice 4 bedroom home costs 200,000+.

As an example Toyota just raked in huge profits for the second quarter. One of the reasons was the crappy yen. They are paying the same number of yen a year to produce a car, but the yen is worth less. Hence when selling in america, they make more money.
whew, wrote more than I planned.
:D

Stocker,