USA pricing...

[Bibs]

http://www.motorauthority.com/blog/1038434_2010-lotus-evora-preview

$73,500 + delivery, cheap eh!

[Al]

To save you all scrabbling around for the exchange rate say at 1.65 $ to

[GavinT]

ouch...$8K down and $1000 a month with balloon over 3 years? With the credit lines still relatively frozen up here in the states I really hope Lotus can find the buyers. I wonder if it was priced at 73K GBP how it would effect the sales in the UK?

Edited November 16, 2009 by GavinT

[Al]

ouch...$8K down and $1000 a month with balloon over 3 years? With the credit lines still relatively frozen up here in the states I really hope Lotus can find the buyers. I wonder if it was priced at 73K GBP how it would effect the sales in the UK?

Gavin, it may just me being dumb but I do not understand your point or where you got figures? Your pricing is working out cheaper than ours, like for like by a fair margin. Credit in the UK unless you are a good risk is also hard to come by. Our prices if compared to where we all expected or hoped the car would be placed is already overpriced by at least 5K GBP if not more which was explained away by the costs rising for all the imported bits on the car. Why would we want to consider the car at 73K GBP as being similar to your situation. Maybe I'm missing something?

[mail@stefan-boehm.de]

full US price list (Euro pricing as comparison):

2010 Lotus Evora 2+2 $73,500 - 63.500

[GavinT]

Gavin, it may just me being dumb but I do not understand your point or where you got figures? Your pricing is working out cheaper than ours, like for like by a fair margin. Credit in the UK unless you are a good risk is also hard to come by. Our prices if compared to where we all expected or hoped the car would be placed is already overpriced by at least 5K GBP if not more which was explained away by the costs rising for all the imported bits on the car. Why would we want to consider the car at 73K GBP as being similar to your situation. Maybe I'm missing something?

Simple..you are looking at the price when factoring in the exchange rate, thus you always give yourself a discount as you convert from USD to GBP. For us in the US there is no such discount. In much the same way as when I buy parts from SJ's the price is not 10.00 but 16.50. I get up charged but it's the same part. So if you compare apples for apples as if 1 USD = 1 GBP then the price would be 73K in both GBP and USD. The question I was simply asking was at 73K is the Evora still as appealing?

8K down, 1000 a month for 3 years and a balloon payment came from a Lotus dealership.

[Al]

Nope, I'm still missing the link somewhere! I'll just remain dumb I guess.

I get paid in US $ as I work for an American Drilling Co. It is up to me to take the convesrion hit every month and then sort out my taxes with our IR. I do not see myself as getting anything discounted because I have spent enough time in States over the years to know that on my salary living in the US I'd be living a considerably better lifestle than I do choosing to convert and live in the UK.

I'd have thought a better example for comparison is for you to say okay lets buy this car in the UK and import into the US paying taxes and shipping costs. I would guess it would be considerably more than your $ pricing even allowing for fact you could take 15% VAT off at this end first.

Tico's comparison also makes interesting reading indicating also cheaper in the States than against the Euro zone.

Anyway to answer your original question, no, I do not think they would have sold many (any??) if priced at 73K GBP

Edited November 17, 2009 by Al.

[GavinT]

I guess you don't see it.

[Al]

Gavin, I thought I'd do another comaprision not many could do as this has me intrigued your argument as I was being sarcastic.

I looked at my actual $ salary for this last 12 months and what % of that a US car bought in $ was. Then I did the same sum for that same money that I have already converted into GBP at various exchange rates over the year. The average of these rates was 1.66. I then bought a UK car in GBP. There is no more direct comparision than that.

To be fair I was expecting it to come down very much in favour of the US but in fact it was within about 1% of each other so very closely matched. Looks like Lotus have pitched it well. I then went back a year and looked at previous figures where the exchange rate was much better for us. In fact the best average ever since I started earning in $ 8 years ago. The average then over 2008 was 1.88 and the % has opened up to 15% in favour of the UK. Starts to support your argument in the best year we have had in 20 or so for exchange rates. Still doesn't accommodate your argument for a 73K GBP car though which is a 54% mark-up

Anyway what the hell, we all have choices to make. How we spend the mulla is just one of them.

[Lowtus]

That Evora pricing in USA looks no more ambitious than the very high prices charged for Elise/Exige.

No American is going to buy a Lotus unless they REALLY want one and are willing to pay the premium price.

[mail@stefan-boehm.de]

I really would like to know the economic state of "the" nation Evoras are sold for a ridiculous low price and guess what - people start whining. I should have really bet on this.