Just met up with some relatives visiting from Thailand....they were overly impressed with my Lexus GS.

Turns out this same car goes for between 4million Baht to 7.6million baht ($150,000 US to $250,000 US) in Thailand due to all the crappy excise and luxury taxes they charge.
Buying a regular Toyota Camry in Thailand is about equal to $40k out here....

It floors me that in countries where the average salary is much less than in the US, in Thailand, you only make 1/4 of your US counterparts in many areas, they will sell items for items many many fold higher than in the US.

Its nuts. Talk about class disparity...and its not like they use the tax money for all that much...their roads and highways suck.

Just an exaggerated (maybe...) example of where the US seems to be heading with lower quality of living, higher taxation and debt.

 

I'm going to count my blessings. Things I love about the US:

Dutch Pickled Eggs


Old cars in new towns


Fine wood furniture


And Mister T

 

It is insane how much Lexus or any luxury vehicle costs over in Thailand. When I told my relatives of my purchase, they were unsure of what I was talking about, as I don't think Lexus Thailand has either an IS 350 or F. I'm heading over there to visit some of them and hopefully there will be some nice cars on the roads, despite the poor driving roads there.

 

Cars in Cambodia, which located on the east of Thailand, are also expensive, but not that expensive. There are a lot of poor driving road outside of the city, that's why people get LX570 and Land Cruiser instead of a sportcar. There are still quite a few ultra luxury, supercar and sportcar despite the poor driving road. LX570 is 170K and Camry is 50K in Cambodia.

 

Same with Vietnam. The VAT is crazy. What's even crazier is the number of Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Maybachs you see driving around. I see more luxury cars and exotics in Saigon in a day than I would a week in SoCal.

 

Wow how things have changed since my family left. I was in 1st grade when we moved to the USA from Saigon. That was about 1991-ish. I remembered there being a lot of older Benz with diesel engines.

That and lots LOTS of mopeds and scooters.

 

glad some people appreciate the u.s. instead of always running it down.

 

Yep, back in Syria (where I'm from) they have a 200% tax on all cars over there.

 

Philippines is the same. Any lexus' there from before they were officially opened there i think 3 or 4 years ago went for big money. If you were driving an lx470, you had cash, same with s-classes. I don't think it is anywhere as bad as other countries though.

 

We are perhaps the only country that have the CHEAPEST automobile prices. Should appreciate everything we have here. I came from a third world so I know first hands how tough it was.

 

I second that!

 

Thats crazy i bet theres lots of money to be made importing cars to these areas....

 

lol, some yellow bellied coward took exception to this thread and created a account just to log on and send me the following PM:

 

LOLOLOL that's too funny xD

haters gon hate !!

 

WTF?