Vivian Zhao's Choice Between Love and Wealth Chapter 291

After the reform and opening up, with the emergence of the first batch of rich people, imported cars such as Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Lexus, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Cadillac have gradually increased. However, the high prices are painful even for the first batch of rich people. In fact, not only imported cars, but domestic cars are also a bit outrageously expensive.

Take Santana for example, it costs 150,000 or 160,000 yuan, and a Xiali starts at 70,000 or 80,000 yuan. At that time, there were no 4-star stores, let alone the Internet, and prices were opaque. Even more outrageous were the local taxes and fees, such as linkage fees, staffing fees, urban capacity expansion fees, and even inexplicable vehicle purchase land fees, education surcharges, urban construction fees, rural fees, etc. In some places, there were as many as ten or even twenty kinds of fees. Therefore, the cheapest Santana would cost 180,000 or 190,000 yuan, and in some places the highest was 230,000 or 240,000 yuan.

Domestic joint venture cars are like this, let alone imported cars. A Mercedes-Benz S from regular channels cannot be bought for less than one million yuan. Take the Mercedes-Benz 600SEL as an example. It is often called the "tiger head Benz". The later S600 is sold abroad starting at 120,000 US dollars. Before 1994, the comprehensive import tariff was 180% to 220%. The price of a car worth 120,000 US dollars in China increased several times. Add in transportation fees, purchase tax, insurance and other expenses, and it will cost about 3 million yuan.

Therefore, another channel has emerged, that is, smuggled cars. Most of them are imported in parts and assembled domestically, because the import tariff on parts is only 33%. Another part is assembled cars, which means the whole car is cut and then assembled and welded domestically. This type of car is the cheapest, but its safety and quality cannot be guaranteed.

From the 1980s to the early 1990s, 70 to 80 percent of the luxury cars on the streets were smuggled cars. Take Shenzhen and Shanghai as an example. General Motors sold less than 10,000 vehicles through regular channels in China, but there were nearly 10,000 General Motors vehicles in Shenzhen and Shanghai alone, including Cadillac, Buick, Pontiac, etc.