Quote:
Originally Posted by zhangyi17
I think there are multiple reasons why these cars are not supposed to be exported for sales.
1) different country has different regulations. For example, China is introducing new emission regulation that the N63 engine in the V8 won't pass.
2) Different countries may have different spec. For example, in DRL is not mandatory in China and it's not custom to have any lights on during day time (ppl will think you forgot to turn your lights off).
2) Most importantly, different markets (countries) has different prices. For example, again in China, official X5 MSRP starting about 700k RMB (about 134k CAD) and this is for a 2L inline 4 cylinder engine. For this price, you can have a X5M in Canada...So BMW China won't be happy if dealers in Canada are exporting to China and cannibalizing it's market. I imagine BMW HQ tells BMW Canada to regulate the dealers in Canada not to export their cars.
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#3 is the big one. A dealer principal can lose their dealership franchise if they are caught selling cars outside of their market. BMW — and all car companies — set their prices according to market forces, ie. what prices the market will bear. They also set prices according to currency exchange rates over an average amount of time and into which they lock themselves (which is why the price of a car does not fluctuate wildly with the variances of different currencies against whatever base currency the company uses.) These car companies are well aware that for many people it is cheaper to buy outside their home market, and therefore use every tool available to limit this possibility.
10-15 years or so ago (I lose track of time) it was possible for a Canadian to buy the same car, with all the same features, for 1/2 to 2/3 the price in the United States, including all import fees. At that time, all of the car companies in the US warned their dealers under pain of losing their license to sell cars not to sell to Canadians. Since it was difficult to actually stop this in practice (there being many dual citizens, straw buyers, the US being a free economy, etc.) many dealers started telling prospective customers things such as car warranties would not be honoured outside the country of purchase (untrue) in order to dissuade the practice. They did this to protect themselves, because they knew that if cars they sold were caught being exported they would be a step closer to having their livelihoods cut off by their corporate parents.
This is, of course, still the way of things. Having a completely free market for cars would throw off profit margins, play havoc with international vehicle allocations, including supply and demand pricing calculations, and make owning a dealership in more expensive markets a difficult proposition. The only happy people would be the ones buying the cars... until dealerships close and the company stopped selling cars altogether.