[BGHater]

[Red Badger]

So, now I can dig out all that old Canadian money in my drawers their snowbirds drop on us in Florida, and spend it like real money?............

[Yo-Yo]

Has the Loon gone up, or has the US Dollar dropped as it has against every other currency in the world?

[pnh102]

Interesting story... but I wonder how much cost and hassle it is to register a foreign-purchased car in Canada. I had nothing but trouble when I attempted to register one of my cars in Maryland after I moved here from Pennsylvania (mainly with inspection-related issues)... so much so that I ended up having to buy a new car as a result.

[PAR35]

It looks like Canadian papers don't have copy editors, either.

To make things even less painless for Canadians

[-YYZ-]

I have noticed this same thing, and it’s teeing me off - enough that I may look at importing my next car from the US, although the Canadian divisions of these companies throw up every barrier they can to protect their fat profits.

It particularly annoys me to see these huge discpreancies in prices on cars that are largely built in the US. The Candian dollar hasn’t appreciated as much against, say the Yen, as it has the US dollar, so I wouldn’t expect to see prices go down quite as much on those. For example, though, a top of the line V6 Honda Accord goes for about CDN$37,000 (maybe a little less) here, and for about USD$29,000 in the US. The difference in price between a top of the line Pontiac G6 in Canada and the US is even greater.

Now, admittedly, the dollar has gone up, a lot, lately. You can’t expect large and rapid swings in exchange rates to be reflected in prices immediately. However, it should be closer than it is, by now. I wonder if part of the reason is that outfits like Honda Canada don’t want to kill the resale value of their cars in Canada - dropping $5,000 off the price of a new Accord would do something similar to the resale value of those already on the road. There’s also the factor that foreign manufacturers can’t jack up prices in the US as quickly as they’d like to - it would just be too unpalatable for US consumers. When the Canadian dollar was really low, you could buy many cars and motorcycles for less in Canada than in the US.

One more example, that really cheeses me off. A new Kawasaki Concours 1400 goes for over CDN$18,000, and less than USD$13,000. That’s a brand new bike on the market, and it’s made in Japan. I expect that price increases are coming in the US if the FX rate stays like it is, and price decreases in Canada, but we’ll have to wait - good for people in the US, not so good for us. I’ll tell you one thing, we never got anywhere that kind of discount in Canada even when the US dollar was worth $1.50 Canadian.