My MBA prof said when buying a car you should negotiate the price by saying you will be financing it. The seller gets a commission from the bank for you financing and will usually offer you a lower price knowing what he loses on the car he gains in the financing, then at the last moment you decide to pay cash and he has no legit reason to change the price and you end up with a cheaper price.

Originally posted by Esprit

I tend to agree with tbird,things are so expensive here because revenue needs to be raised through purchase tax. The levels of tax evasion here are scandalous (probably similar to Greece).

Finrudd

Yes tok$stok is expensive agreed on that one, but the quality is easily equal to Ikea if not better.
I kitted out my daughters bedrooms with Tok & Stok everything is MDF and all very solid and has lasted well, and nothing i bought is made from chipboard

If you want to compare something in brasil to the old MFI
shops in the uk you should be looking at marrabraz( not sure of the spelling there) casas bahia and ponto frio
these shops are real bad quality , in fact a perfect example of badly made , poor quality, sh*t manufactured and sold in brasil

Originally posted by mark k i read an interesting article last month about Land Rover who were complaining about the 100% import tax on their cars ( the brasilians love the Discovery , Range Rover , Freelander , etc you see quite alot in sao paulo) Brasils answer to this was " if you want to avoid the 100% import tax ,build a plant in Brasil and make your cars here " which to be honest i think is a fair point. Anyway as far as i know Land Rover are now planning to open a plant in brasil over the next few years so i read. somewhere in the North of brasil. Brasil only wants to protect their own manufacturing industry as well as protecting jobs for the people. This high 100% tax they have on imported cars pisses me off alot but i understand why they do it in fact India Thailand , Singapore etc they are all doing the same thing so its not just Brasil

I understand why they do it also. I don't agree with it though.

Brazil has never been a manufacturing hub, I can't actually think of any Brazilian produced goods that are in demand and exported around the world.

There aren't enough manufacturers investing in production plants in Brazil which means there is no competition and it's clear that the ones that do manufacture here collude to produce similar low specification cars at high prices.

If Land Rover build cars here, it'll have very little effect on the prices. They may make them slightly cheaper but they will still be about double the price they are in Europe/US. They will probably produce older models here also.

To be fair, the last thing Brazil needs is more cars on the roads, the city's can't take it.

Does India, Thailand and Singapore have huge taxes on anything imported (like Brazil) or is it something specifically set up to protect just a few industries?