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The Montreal Gazette DRIVING section came out with it’s own home grown journalist Kevin Mio piecing together an evaluation of the new 2011 Cadillac CTS coupe!   This is unusual for the Gazette, usually they pilfer articles from the auto journalists in other Canwest locations and those writing for Media News.  

Nice to see a local boy get a shot, but what does he do… he complains that if he wants a red colored CTS v6 Coupe he has to pay an extra 1,295 plus tax.  

And not one mention of the U.S. price and how Canadians are getting taken to the cleaners for over $13,000 more than their wealthy U.S. Cousins.  And do you know why Americans are considered wealthy and have a better standard of living than Canadians… They don’t get screwed on the price of their vehicles!

2011-01-24 Gazette Cadillac CTS evaluation 

Well of course we couldn’t resist this very bias reporting, so we decided to again take a look at the current U.S. / Canadian Price, making sure that we compared apples to apples and here is what we found:

 Here are the detailed summaries that you can find at  www.cadillac.com and www.cadillac.ca

2011 CTS Coupe Canadian Price Summary    2011 Cadillac CTS U.S. Price Summary

There it is all in a nutshell.  Our recommendation is that if you thinking of buying this car, then you have enough cash to hire yourself a broker to do it for you.  see our friends at either www.NAATA.org  or www.apa.ca .

If you do it yourself make sure you either have the U.S. dealer “Canadianize” the daytime running lights or locate a  Canadian Dealer that will do it for you.  Most of the Canadian guys will tell you they can’t do it, or try and charge you a couple of thousand dollars to do a 5 minute task.  Legislation recently introduced in California has put a stop to this type of gouging.  The government and consumer organizations there don’t put up with it! 

Canada… well what more can I say… we have Don Cherry and GM spokesperson Bobby Orr..

Bobby lives in Boston, maybe he can get us a good deal!

Well  we had a pleasant surprise this morning while perusing the Driving section of the Gazette.  POSTMEDIA NEWS reporters John and Sandra Turely-Ewart were allowed to report that the entry level price of the 2011 Cadillac CTS Coupe is $9,000 more in Canada. A 20% difference!   

They go on to state that “the difference seems a bit much, something GM might want to revisit the price if it wants this car to sell in Canada and generate new Caddy Customers”.

Cadillac CTS good journalism!

Well this is a bit refreshing, but I am sure their editor had them tone it down.  So I decided to look at the true difference for hard working Canadians! 

Here is what we found:

Now this study is a bit rushed, and we didn’t go over the spec sheets in lengthy detail, but we are willing to wager that the US version is better built and has more features.

Here is the pricing data:

2011 CTS Coupe US Pricing   2011 Cadillac CTS Coupe Canadian Pricing  2011 Cadillac CTS Coupe Canadian Pricing OPage 2 

Remember in Quebec you need to make around $25,000 in order to save $13,000 after taxes! That is a big hit on our cost of living, but we guess GM figures wealthy Canadians are just as stupid as the CRUZE folks!

 On a side note, we are hoping that GM does not “black-ball” this writing team, as we have heard them to do in the past.  All Auto Journalists just love the free trips, parties and give aways that the Car companies throw at them!

Guess they make good candidates to run for political office in Canada, or work in Construction in Quebec!   EVERYBODY KNOWS …. EVERYBODY KNOWS……

So the Cruze is making a big splash all over North America.  (also Car of the year in INDIA! … we wonder who they wined and dined and  paid off to get this title… )

This morning we were so upset with these rave revues, we wondered if GM was going to be fair to Canadians!  With a dollar hovering just over par you… my hard working Canadian can now  pay over $5000.00 more in Canada for the same car your U.S. cousins are purchasing.  $30,379.77 in the U.S. and $35696.25 in Canada.  Almost a 15% difference!

see details Cruze U.S. Pricing  , and Cruse Canadian Pricing 1 and Cruze Canadian pricing 2. 

What is not surprising is how all the Automobile Journalists have refrained from writing on this pricing issue, while at the same time informing us of all the fantastic new features. 

They should be mentioning the pricing issue, but I guess they still want to be wined and dined by the Canadian Car Companies…..   Canwest Car writers need to start informing Canadians rather that being cheerleaders for Car Companies that are ripping Canadians off!!!!

In case you were wondering  what kind of cars are being the most imported into Canada.  Well here is a list of 6 companies and how the 2010 1st Quarter imports compare to the 1st Quarter 2009.   It’s going up boys and girls - going up even with all those hurdles.

 You have got to be kidding!  This is Jon Stewart material!  So today, GM has finally woken up and decided to increase production and recall 1,350 workers in Ontario and Ohio.

Yesterday Canwest reported that GM did not have one car in the top ten sellers of those that were making “clunker” trades.  It would be interesting to find out if GM had any vehicles in the top 25.  And what models they were. 

By our count well over 1/3 of the allotted funds have been spent and GM hopes to grab some of the sales by having product available.

Let us hope that these magical managers at GM know what they are doing. 

Wonder how much GM is planning to “gouge” hard working Canadian car consumers!  They have billions of our tax dollars, now they will charge us  over 12% more than Americans —unfair prices for vehicles built in Canada!

Coming this winter… “Auto Bailout number 2″ playing at a theatre near you.

2009-08-18gazette.pdf 

You can also check out these sites and have fun readying what the the world thinks of this mess!

 Some dealers are even opting out of the program!

Check out the U.S. Govt site - CARS

Many thanks to one of our members that took a few minutes out of their busy day to contribute a U.S. / Canadian Price comparison on the 2010 Buick LaCrosse/Allure CXS.

At today’s exchange rate of 0.9235 the saving  is 12.76% or $6090.42.    At par hard working, smart shopping Canadians can avoid being  “gouged” by 19.38% or $9,251.03 by shopping in the U.S.  It appears to us that the “NEW” GM(Government Motors), is just following along it’s old ways. 

In Canada the car is called Allure. In the US they call it LaCrosse.  We imagine they did this to confuse cross-border shoppers.

Despite recent claims by Dougie Porter and his gang at the Bank of Montreal it appears that “Fair” pricing for Canadian Automobile Consumers is but a pipedream.  Is our productivity and standard of living so much less than the Americans that car companies continue to gouge us. 

The Canadian Car Consumer has to wake up!

We also heard that GM is targeting this vehicle for the Chinese Market.

http://www.wheels.ca/article/494378  

With the dollar certain to rise closer to parity, it appears that purchasing the new 2010 Camaro 2SS in California, using Ebay, (see yesterday’s post) can save Canadians some big bucks.

It appears, that the Canadian wing of GM, now partially owned by the Canadian Govt, has decided to set Canadian prices using the equivalent of a 0.80 Loonie.  Using a 0.9079 loonie, as was the price this afternoon, CarsWithoutBorders achieves 12.23% difference or a $6,314.87 difference.

At Par Canadians will save over 20% or $10,452.93. 

Examining the features quickly we also had the feeling that the Canadian model lacked several features not included in the American model.  It would take a team like those folks working with Dougie Porter at BMO a couple of hours to really get a good feel of the differences, but we suspect the difference would be even greater. 

Here’s what we came up ewith in 30minutes of work. 

 As a side note the Canadian GM Website appears easier to use than the U.S. one.  I guess when you are gouging Canadians on price you can spend a bit more on IT.  Why not have just one big North American site … be the first GM … Why continue to waste your dollars on two sets of IT teams.  Lay off one and save some money for the things you do right!

 It appears that a retired GM employee and his wife could run this Company and make it profitable again!

Note: feel free to use the Price Comparison spreadsheet on the right (under the resources section) and experiment yourself with other models. Forward your analysis to us and we will post them.

2009-08-11camarocanadian.pdf     2009-08-11camarous.pdf