Full Report: Installed E55 -Avantgarde tailights (Pics)
I think since gas is relatively really cheap here in the US, we like cars with more horsepower and like to step on it.
In a lot of the Asian countries (Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, etc.) the prices of import vehicles are like double what we pay here in the US. So an upgrade of $5000 here from a V6 to V8 in those countries becomes a $10,000 upgrade. So the incremental costs are much greater than it is for us here in the US. Also, in many of those countries, their tax/registration fee is directly related to the displacement of their engine. So all these factors plus the high cost of gasoline really makes it impractical for them to have big engines. Also I believe in Japan, a street legal car cannot exceed a set horsepower limit...
I am pretty sure in the US, if you sell over a certain volume, your model has to meet certain guidelines for safety in tests. Those test with the cars crashing as such... cause each engine handles a crash differently. And when you factor those cars into pricing and such it might not be worth bringing over to the US.
Like if a car is 200,000 usd in Europe, and for the test, 5 models needed to be crashed, and there was only a market for 250 of these cars in the US, that would mean... almost 4000 cost per car additional either paid by the maker or the consumer...
-Petey
Dave




Last edited by E55 KEV; Mar 25, 2002 at 11:35 AM.



