Motor Dealers Oppose Price Controls For Used Cars

Grey River Argus, 20 May 1947, Page 2

Motor Dealers Oppose Price Controls For Used Cars

WELLINGTON, May 19. Any attempt to control used car trading and prices would best be left to the natural pay of supply and demand and competition to operate states the Retail Motor Trade. Association in a statement opposing the suggestion that second hand car prices should be controlled. Tire Association urges refraining from any attempted arbitrary control in the field in which there was no world precedent for success, although there have been several attempts. Increased importations would solve the problem. This had already been made with Englisn cars and would recur if more American cars were admitted.

“We forsee that control would make a gift to the ‘underground’ of the business in the best class of second hand American cars,’ said the statement, which added that only a minor fraction of the present dealing in used cars was through the recognised trade channels. Traders held the opinion that in current condiprospects there was not general inflationary distortion of used car prices to-day, and the established trade was not making an excessive profit from to-day’s conditions.

The Association held that cars entered only indirectly into the costs of production and the cost of living which had been held to constitute the prirary field for price control activity.