12 | On your mind ...continued.
Fair questions Geoff. There's no simple answer but a large part of it comes down to economies of scale. Last year Australia sold around 23,000 new recreational vehicles of all types, of which only about 1100 were motorhomes and campervans. By comparison, combined European sales of motorhomes and campervans alone are about 75-80 times greater than ours and the UK on its own is close to 10 times greater. This means fixed costs like a dealer’s wage bill, lease/mortgage, insurance, etc can be spread over a lot more vehicles sold per year, presuming there aren’t 10 times as many dealers! Even things like vehicle delivery cost to the dealer must be lower, given the size of the UK.
here also have to provide warranty and service back-up, carry a large range of spares and so on, well beyond what an ordinary UK dealer would. And then there are the shipping costs from the other side of the world. Does that all add up to $60,000 per vehicle? Like you I’m thinking not, but importers also deserve a return on investment as bringing in motorhomes on a commercial basis is an expensive and risky business. Hopefully as competition increases and more imported brands appear, prices will fall. Until then you either pay the money asked or buy locally made. As they say, “You pays your money and makes your choice.” They just never told you your choice might not be what you really want…
Compliance costs are substantially more than just changing “some power points”, while importers
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