I went and looked at an imperial blue HHR -SS around noon today. On the GM Canada websites its states the car's msrp of about $28,000 or so with amanual 5spd tranny. The sticker price for this imperial blue hhr SS with an automatic transmission & moonroof.. .$33,175!!!!! . I was disgusted like you would not believe. The msrp for a 2008 hhr SS WITH A MANUAL TRANSMISSION is $22,995. Also, incorrectly posted on the car was the estimated fuel economy........26 MPG-CITY and 41mpg hwy. (yah right!). GM builds this car in mexico, Gm also has various car & truck factories in CANADA and the Canadian dollar is on par with the american dollar. So is it strictly just GREED ? In the past few months GM, FORD and CHRYSLER have been advertising cars and trucks with '' new canadian pricing''. They realized the public has been complaining about the huge price differences between the 2 countries so they try to make it seem fairer by offering '' up to $1500 off in incentives or gas money back!!!'' wow...whooopee. I think im slowly starting to lose interest in buying a HHR SS. 24 grand should be the most this vehicle should be going for..on either side of the border.

 

I did a conversion of Canadian dollar to US and that 33,000 is like 32500 US. Man I'd be ticked also. Don't know the mpg conversion but the mpg is better than what I thought it would be before it came out. After all it is only a 2.0L and should be good if your foot isn't too heavy. I bought OEM splash guards for my 08 HHR 2LTand installed myself and they are made where, yep Canada and yet GM sends them to Mex to be installed as an option and shipped back to you, guess you are paying shipping and tariff taxes on your own products. Chevy upped their incentives to 2500 on the LT in the states, do you guys up there have that also. Know you've been beating the bushes on whether or not to get one for a long time. I'm just glad I didn't have to pay what you guys on the other side of the border do.

 

an08HHR...

I think the splash guards are a DEALER INSTALLED option. At least in the States I believe they are.

 

Somebody call the Waaambulance, chooch is crying about something again!

I'm thinking it's probably not greed, rather development costs associated with building the vehicle to Canadian specs. Fewer buyers in Canada means fewer vehicles to spread out those costs. In addition, it costs GM a LOT more money to do business in Canada (free health care has to be paid for somewhere) than it does in the US, so why shouldn't the cars be more expensive?

 

The imperial gallon (used in Canada) is 20% larger. It follows that you'd get 20% more mileage out of it. 41/1.2 = 34.17; sounds better?

Other than higher shipping cost and possibly higher business costs, there is no justification for such a large differencial. To my knowledge, canadian specs are aligned with US specs (except maybe the DRL, which are on it in the US anyway). Don't forget, we also pay huge amounts of tax on cars:
$100 AC tax, abt $50 tire recycling tax, 5% GST, PST(8% in QC).
They are priced to a level that people are used to pay. A few years ago, when the $CA was worth .75 $US, the car manufacturers were charging a 20-25% premium (totally justified in that case) to compensate for the exchange rate. The problem now is that they'd need to remove most of it but it's just starting to happen.

I agree with chooch; I wouldn't pay more than 24-25K for one. I also value fuel economy and reliability more than raw performance, so I'm not likely in the targetted market.

Yves

 

dont forget dreamhhr, we also get ''FREE HEALTHCARE'' that has to be incorporated into the price justification. Oh, and the huge costs of adding kilometers along with miles on the speedo. Somebody get out a bag, HHRCRAFTY'S wind is blowing again. Well, at least i had 3 intelligent replies here so far! thanks guys!

 

i am very tempted to go in and ask. my buddy imported a subara suv from the u.s. saved 7 grand. 26,000 sounds right for a panel ss

thx dave

 

My genuine GM molded splash guards came in on Saturday....

Conquest Auto on the web......$44.95 for a set of 4 w / free shipping...

Gonna install them myself.....LOL

Cajun

 

Maybe its an extra 10 000 bucks for daylight running lamps O.o

 

We all know that we "Canucks" pay too much (on average) for most vehicles. Given the overall state of the auto industry, the least that the fine folks in Oshawa, Oakville and Windsor should do is reduce their product down to "par"; But they cannot......

The domestic resale rates are not as strong as the imports (at least in Canada), and if GM suddenly dropped the MSRP, they'd kill the rates of the vehicles currently or soon to be off-lease and resold.

Instead, they try to "reduce the transaction price".

Example: the worst offender in the disparity game from the domestics is GM with the Corvette. MSRP for a 2008 Canadian market Corvette coupe: $69,500.00. For the US 2008 Corvette coupe: $46950.00.

A local Cdn dealer will give you an $11000.00 "delivery allowance", plus a $4000.00 "GM rebate". Which reduces the car by $15000.00 down to $54500.00.

That's still disproportionate, but the transaction will show as $54500.00, and the MSRP will still show as $69500.00 minus the incentives.

GM assumes that most people will not bother to pay a broker or meddle with the Customs paperwork for a savings of $8000.00-$10000.00 on a $55000.00+ car.

The situation is not great, but it will be years (if at all), before the prices are listed as "the same" in both countries. There's no way that the lease and resale business would/could survive. And face it, a lot of GM dealers make their $$ from resales as well.

Just my $0.02.