Kawasaki Sportsbike Riders Club - Australia - Online Forum

do motorbikes cost so much vs cars in Australia ?

I say in Australia, but unsure if this question doesn't apply elsewhere as well.

The question is based on a litre bike or larger at a price point of $20K-$25 vs a small car.

The car has a greater mass and a lot more consideration in it's design as production, has stuff like doors, boot & bonnet, seats, upholstery, air con. lighting, seat belts & airbags,radio/stereo/speakers,widows, 4 wheels + spare, locks etc etc etc as well as the ability to transport 5 people.

Forgive me if this rather trivial question has been raised before, but I don't recall seeing it

Is it because we pay the price anyway?

kaneg wrote:
The question is based on a litre bike or larger at a price point of $20K-$25 vs a small car.

Are you referring to euro litre bikes because jap litre super sports are more like in the vicinity of 16-19k.

Volume would be one issue but I would dare say R&d in bikes wouldn't be much than cars

volume... same reason 400m2 of tiles costs you less per m than 40m2 of tiles say...

Two areas, units sold and number of models

R&D may be less in bikes due to lower component numbers, but that cost is spread over thousands of units, not like hundreds of thousands in car sale.

The second part is model interchangeability. Many car models share parts, from engines, drive chains and even chassis. Often manufacturers get together and build a car each that shares parts. Then there is the companies who own multiple badges & share even more. The VW Golf's entire Chassis, engine & drive train is used by a number of other cars including Pasat, Beetle, Saet Ibeza, Skoda Favouite, & I believe even an Audi or two. Each car now has a lower R&D component, plus the parts can be mass manufactured to bring the cost down further.

Question is "Why do motorbikes cost so much vs cars in Australia ?"

So why then is a ZX10r $13K in the USA and $19K in AUS ???
That has absolutely nothing to do with the number of units produced /"mass production"/efficiency by volume...
You cannot even put it down to our 'remoteness' / freight costs....we are physically closer to Japan than USA is.
Especially disgusting when our dollar has been at or above parity for quite some time....

Import tarrifs!


Fred

Well as off today we can blame it on the carbon tax

Volume sorta does come into play here, the population of the USA is over 311 Million where Australia is just over 22 Million, a bit more bargaining power when buying products, just ask Coles or Woolworths and i bet they would love that consumer base..., if you look at a standard car like the Toyota Camry, in the USA on their Website it Retails for $22055 for the base model, in Australia it is $30490 a difference of $8435.
Another thing to consider is that just because you can buy a shoe box or chinese car for around the same price as a litre sport bike you would have to fork out a whole lot more to get similar performance, you certainly wouldn't be able to embarrass that Porsche at the Traffic Light GP with a $25k car

oldmanmike wrote:........Question is "Why do motorbikes cost so much vs cars in Australia ?"

So why then is a ZX10r $13K in the USA and $19K in AUS ???
That has absolutely nothing to do with the number of units produced /"mass production"/efficiency by volume...
You cannot even put it down to our 'remoteness' / freight costs....we are physically closer to Japan than USA is.
Especially disgusting when our dollar has been at or above parity for quite some time....

absolutely 100% true.

We have been getting screwed over for so long here in Oz, we just all bend over and cop it fair up the ring when it comes to paying a premium for fucken' *everything* we buy.

The market these days is a global market, all that bullshit about 300mill v 22 mill is exactly that - bullshit. We just get screwed over full stop. The global market for ZX10R's is more like 400mill split between some different shipping addresses !!!!! there is no logical reason at all for us paying almost 50% greater price premium than the Yanks, none whatsoever.

About 12 months ago I was in Sydney trying to but a second hand bike (Kawasaki of course) and they wanted the same price for a 5 year old cruiser as they were selling them for in the USA brand new. I asked him the same question and got the usual rhetoric, smaller marked, profit margins, value of the Australian dollar, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, as oldmanmike and Gos said, BULLSHIT they are just ripping us off (imho) it was like listening to the Prime Ministers crap.

If you really wanna see how were getting screwed over, check out the used price UK vs AUS
Lotus Elise (2002 Model Convertible)
- Australia - $35,500AUD
- England - $16,200AUD

Mazda 626 (2002 2L)
- Australia - $8900AUD
- England - $2070AUD

All examples found similar model, similar Ks - UK pound to AUD present exchange rate of $1.6 per £1

Pete as you are referring to car v bike regardless of where you buy I think you will find that if you bought a high spec engined car the difference is massive by way of the car being overpriced. Your average sports bike revs to 14000 rpm, can do the 1/4 mile in 10 seconds, accelerate to 100km/h in the blink of an eye, can be taken to the track straight out of the box and be competitive and actually handle the day without requiring any changes.

The engines are at the top end of the the technology and performance band in comparison to the average car, you need to spend $60k+ to get something that higher spec in the way of a car and even then you are scraping the bottom of the barrel

Not only that, check out the price of CV8 Monaros over here and over there - out here you can expect to pay upwards of AUD$20-25k, over there you can get a decent example for AUD$15k... And they are all made over here!

I think part of the problem is we are spread out a lot more compared to other countries, so the cost of transport to each dealer is much higher. It is still a much larger price difference than it should be in today's global market in my personal opinion!

Have a look at KTM and Yamaha dirt bike parts, they tend to cost double, sometimes up to 250% of the US price out here, and that's after you convert it to Aussie dollars. Honda are heading very fast towards parity and by what I've seen Kawasaki aren't as bad either, so I don't see why the others can't follow suit. I think it comes down to they have been charging those prices and they think they can keep maintaining that same margin even though the dollar is close to parity. It sucks, not only for the Aussie customers but also for people like my boss, we are getting by and the place is improving every day but the price difference from Australia to the US is slowly killing a lot of the wreckers out here. Without the wreckers, imagine what they could charge for new parts seeing as there is no competition!