.

Yes, the other day the Canadian Dollar hit $1.0218 U.S.  This is a car buyers dream, whether you are venturing out for the first time or are a regular “smart” shopper, or if you are buying a new or used vehicle, conditions are ideal. 

Brand new vehicles are hard to come buy, but many smart U.S. dealers are running up a thousand or so miles  miles on demos and they seem to be very attractive to Canadians.   At the same time, if they label them used, the dealers can avoid being penalized for selling new cars to Canadians!

Follow the guidelines on our site, or pay a Canadian broker.  The thousands of dollars you save now, will help pay for your children’s education, or pay off the mortgage faster, or dental bills, or just add to your retirement fund.    Start improving your cost of living, stop being a lacky for the over priced Canadian car industry and our inept Govt.  that continues to support Multi-national companies over hard working Canadians.

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 the fine print on the latest Ford ad, which begins with ” WISE BUYERS READ THE SMALL PRINT”.  is pretty deceptive and we are told these ads “stink so much, they are there just to get you into the showroom, and then squeeze you for an extra 5 or 10K.”

 After reading and examing the Ford ad today, we thought we would check out the Internet.  In their rush to combat CWB’s entry yesterday pointing out that “Even Ford is Screwing Canadians!” , the build and price feature doesn’t appear to work.

So we phoned up a Canadian dealer and learned that the current deal for a 2011 Manual Escape Xlt I4, is for cash only!, If you want to finance it the rate is 6.99% apr!

But he told us that if you purchase one of the more upscale models, ie…  the price will be 4-5 k higher but you can get 0% financing for up to 72 months.    The same model with Automatic transmission is $6,000 more, but you can get 0 % financing!  You can check the specs and options and pricing out here.

Now how many of us think this is a good deal?  How many Canadians think that if they overpay for a vehicle, but obtain 0% financing they are getting a good deal!  

These car companies really think you Canadians are stupid!

We have included a PDF version of the Ford ad  in order to help you read the small print! We couldn’t make it out ourselves until we loaded it into a PDF file, rotated it and then blew it up to 400%.  Don’t you just luv the Canadian Consumer laws that allow Multi-national companies to get away with this deceptive marketing.  The 2011 Ford explorer ad.

Now,  to top this all off, Page B16 of the Gazette featured an article by Zack Spencer titled ”Ford’s Faded Explorer gets a new life with redesign”… he could have titled it:   Ford’s Faded Explorer Gets a new Life, unfortunately Ford still screwing Canadians on Price!

So the battle for your hard earned taxed dollars goes on!  Please shop smartly!

A little birdie told me late yesterday that the print version of the Globe and Mail article was different than the Internet version!  They left out the most important part of the article; see the paragraph below:

“The shame of it all is a normal Canadian citizen with a family and a couple kids can’t just go and save five or six thousand dollars on a car. And they are losing that money,” Mr. Lamb said

So I figured that they must have run out of space and some hack editor with a grade three education decided to deep-6 the most important message…..  

 Then after a bit more thought it occurred to me that they too must be worried about their car ad revenues… so the print version misses the boat…

Another example of the power of the internet and the more I think, the more I realize we need a CarsWithoutBorders WikiLeaks?

The  legitimate work of good intentioned reporters continues to be massacred by bonehead editors and publishers.  

This morning the Globe and Mail published an article “Retailers feel heat from parity-happy Canadians” by Rita Trichur and Greg Keenan.  Retailers feel heat! . 

We were interviewed in depth on many issues they neglected to outline, but we are grateful that they were able to get across the biggest issue Canadian Consumers  have today.  **

—- The Government, and Multinational Companies hiding behind non-tariff issues, are preventing hard working Canadian Families from not taking advantage of lower prices.  ——-  They are keeping our standard of living down.  Our Own Government, the one we elected a few years ago, with Mr. Harper’s key slogan “a vote for me is a vote for the little guy!”,  is really screwing the Canadian Consumer!   Even most of the Canadian Consumer Groups with their highly paid Directors,  glossy magazines and websites avoid the real issues. 

 As of 10:00 a.m. this morning and the article has generated over 200 comments of outraged Canadians, on both sides of the issues.  How many GM lobbyists are secretly signing to the Globe and Mail and advocating Canadians spend their money in Canada!

Well as my good friend Roy Green states quiet frequently…..

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Downloads 163

But Canadians need to wake up!  They need to spend time out of their hectic lives and get involved, let your polititians know that you aren’t happy.  The internet is a fantastic tool use it to save time and get your point across! 

And to all those folks working thanklessly for Transport Canada, The Conservative Government or the Big Multi-nationals,  if you  are aware of plans, actions or  incidents against hard working Canadian Consumer… let us know.. .. join our forum…. CarwithoutBorders…. the WikiLeaks of the Canadian Automobile Consumer!…

**(It is not easy to explain and highlight issues that their editor would not let them print)

- the media is afraid to lose revenues from Car Advertising.  So they don’t always tackle the sensitive issues. Wonder how Don Cherry feels about hard working Canadians getting the boots.  We know his friend  Bobby Orr sells overpriced GM cars to Canadians!

Serge and I would like to wish all our members and supporters a happy, healthy, safe and prosperous New Year!  

Well I did the numbers a few times and I knew exactly how much I wanted off my new Highlander Hybrid 2011 - Limited - fully loaded - leather - sunroof - AWD - navigation System - Satelllite radio and much more.  I got pricing from Ottawa Toyota, Cornwall Toyota and a US Toyota dealer (they would not sell to me but that can be arranged if the price is right).  Armed with all of this $ information and having a local reputation of buying in the US if I have to.  I negotiated a deal in my home town and I am happy to encourage the local gang.   In summary, my 2011 Highlander Hybrid was paid $57,013 all taxes included.  The US import all included would have cost me $56,223, for a small difference of $790.00   The US rate at the time was $0.97  - today it hovering around $1.00.  I have attached the excel sheet that shows the calculations.   But in summary for this vehicle (built in Japan) - the 6.1% duty of $2, 818 plus the Trade-in tax credit of $1,495 made this vehicle a good purchase in Canada.  CarsWithoutBorders is not about buying all cars in the USA - it is about getting fair pricing - equivalent pricing - and in this case I bought my car right here in Canada.

Highlander Hybrid 2011 US - Can comparaison