true, however lack of competitive rivalry is to blame.
i think they suzuki,honda and toyota probably have it understood amongst themselves that they can keep reducing quality of material used and the other will do the same, without raising any questions about the other.
only lower duties will force these companies to rethink think their product.If we can get rival brands here and their spare parts available at affordable prices,then they are bound to make improvements,otherwise if they know that their cars are going to sell in anycase, why would they bother? there making huge profits and they will continue to find cost cutting strategies to insure maximum profit.
Another aspect to keep in mind is that we as Pakistani's do not like change even when imported brands like Mitsubishi,hyundai,nissan,Chevrolet released their 1300cc and above sedans,only a limited amount of people bought these cars, given that are much more expensive to maintain and that their spare parts are harder to obtain,however with reduced duties they can and will be available easier.
now its not to say that we reduce the duties so much that the local assemblers go bust but just enough competition so that they are forced to improve the quality of their respective products and give us value for our money,i think as consumer's we deserve atleast that.
i would disagree with you on this, its about getting VALUE FOR YOUR MONEY!
we are given a product no matter how good or bad and since there is no alternative available, we buy it anyway..
now to say buy a used car and stop complaining means we just avoid the problem.
a new honda si sedan US model starts at $22405 which comes roughly to 19 lac pakistani rupee SIMILAR PRICE RANGE and we get INFERIOR QUALITY!
all we want is the same quality for the same car as both consumers in the US and pakistan pay the same price for the same car.Same for toyota owners and suzuki owners.
if you have read my previous comment i have never said dont import, we do need competition to drive prices down and quality up.however only if new zero meter imports will be economically feasible is when the local automobile industry start to do anything about it.we also deserve value for money.
infact i was going to purchase a local made hilux but decided against it due to the bad build quality.However if i want to keep the car for 4-5 years i would prefer a zero meter when i purchase it buy the time i sell it its not a 10 year old car!
importing more cars will just result in the price going down for the short term,what they will do is reduce the price dramatically and when everybody starts to buy local cars again they will increase the price.the only way to insure long term quality product is to introduce stricter quality controls.
no amount of short term solution will result in long term quality stability.
i would love to buy an imported car currently there is no comparison if you compare it to the quality of the local manufactured cars however i do not want to pay millions for a 4-5 year used imported car.
if we are getting the honda,toyota suzuki models here that are the same world wide then only strict quality control measures will ensure long term benefits to us buyers
we should support the the local industry they employ hundred of thousands of people.we must not conceive policies that might cause them to to go out of business but we should support more competition,allow more car companies to invest here and manufacture there cars locally.it will in the end befit us from more choice better quality products at competitive prices
