Cheaper car plan puzzles industry

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33520, 29 April 1974, Page 2

Cheaper car plan puzzles industry

IX.I. Press Association)

AUCKLAND, April 28

Leaders in the motor industry were puzzled last night by an announcement from the Minister of Trade and Industry (Mr Freer) that the Cabinet would soon discuss a proposal to reduce the cost of four-cylinder family cars. Sources in the industry had no inside word of what Mr Freer’s proposal might be.

Mr Freer announced that his department had, for some months, been making a survey with other Government departments of a method of lowering the price of four-cyl-inder family cars. The survey was ordered before the oil crisis loomed last

year, and it now had added importance. Leaders in the industry suggested that the prices of small cars could be cut only by a reduction in sales tax, or by the imposition of a higher registration fee for larger cars. "The people who buy big cars now are those who can afford them, and they are not going to worry about an extra $lOO to register them,” said Mr Russell, president of the Auckland Licensed Motor Vehicle Dealers Association.

Mr Vane, secretary of the association, said the only positive way to reduce the price of small cars would be by varying the sales tax.