The Saab Turbo X index
Supply and demand boffins at The Economist use the Big Mac Index to judge the purchasing power of people in a particular country and whether the currency’s valuation provides some fairness. This should give you an idea, from the most recent BMI published at The Economist:
the euro is overvalued by 17% against the dollar. How come? The euro is worth about $1.22 on the foreign-exchange markets. A Big Mac costs €2.92, on average, in the euro zone and $3.06 in the United States. The rate needed to equalise the burger’s price in the two regions is just $1.05. To patrons of McDonald’s, at least, the single currency is overpriced.…
So, taking that whole theory a whole lot larger, and not taking into account any taxes (and thereby rendering the whole exercise useless as a real measuring tool) I thought it’d be good to list the various Turbo X prices around the world in a common currency so that we can see how much we’re all paying in relative terms.
Let’s work in US dollars and make our comparative model a Saab Turbo X sport sedan, manual, with no options fitted. I’ll do my currency conversions via Yahoo Finance.
I’ll start with a few known prices here. Please add your market’s Turbo X price in comments. I’ll then add it to the list in the front page here.
- United States - US$42,510
Canada (CA$54,995) - US$55,006
Australia (A$88,800) - US$84,879
Sweden (SEK409,900) - US$68,553
UK (GBP32,495) - US$63,594
Netherlands (€60,530) - US$94,284
Germany (€46,000) - US$71,651
Singapore (SGD188,000) - US$137,577
Finland (64000€) - US$99,801
Norway (NOK861,400) - US$171,819
Hungary (HUF14.000.000) - US$88,414
Lithuania (LTL166,666) - US$75,213
Latvia (LVL41,752) - US$93,113
UPDATE - All of those prices were gathered from Saab press releases previously mentioned here - The price quoted from Saab in that country. Some manufacturers are compelled to include certain taxes and charges in that price (such as the luxury car tax here in Australia).
OK, here’s the initial graph…..click to enlarge and see how many greenbacks you’ll need to secure your X 
——
I couldn’t find an official Norwegian price, but would be very interested to know. From the Norwegian review I just posted, it looks as if the Norwegians pay more in vehicle taxes alone than what many markets pay for the entire vehicle.
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I think most European prices include taxes (The Netherlands for sure) so it would be fair to include taxes for the USA price as well. It seems 6% is a good average.
ironic how BMI also stands for Body Mass Index, something else the Big Mac contributes to…..
…And then you must also include the fact that many of these European countries do NOT pay for their health care at all. Isn’t that part of some countries ridiculous tax?
I don’t think it’s fair to compare if that’s the case. If Americans pay an average of $200-$400 per month for health care and dental, surely you need to factor that in as well.
Otherwise, we’ll have the same conversation we always do about “You lucky Yankees have it so good over there….”
Oh, and I haven’t even brought up paying higher education payments….
In Singapore, the Turbo X is selling for SGD188000 which comes to USD137577.
In case anyone is wondering, no the above price for a Turbo X in Singapore is not a mistake. In fact, the list price is actually SGD200000.
Originally, the local dealer was allocated 2, but those sold really fast so they asked for 2 more. They were even considering raising the price.
fascinating initiative. As far as possible, lets focus on Pre-Tax sales prices for the sake of clarity.
I’d also suspect the main price-setting consideration is more about industry benchmarks than currency & taxes or even shipping. All European cars are expensive here in australia, no matter where they are made. Its called marketing.
Shyang - so which is it selling for? 188K or 200K?
I know there’s a temptation to turn this into a US vs the rest thing, but that’s not the intention. Everyone knows the score on that account.
What I find more interesting is the inter-Euro comparisons. Germany vs Holland being a classic case in point.
List price is SGD200000, but they give you a “discount”. So the actual sale price is SGD188000.
Wow, some of those are unbelievable. If a Saab costs that much, how much is something like a Ferrari or a Lambo? How much is the Veyron?
The Veyron……if you have to ask, then you can’t afford it
I probably missed a number of things here but, according to my calculations the Turbo X Index (TXI) suggests that the Swedish krona (SEK) is overvalued relative the American dollar (USD) by 29%.
Assuming a VAT in Sweden of 25%, the pre-tax price for a Turbo X would be 54,842 USD (=68,553 - (68,553 x 0.20)). The Turbo X costs 42,510 USD in the states, therefore the TXI would be 1.29 (=54,842/42,510).
According to Yahoo Finance 1.00 USD = 5.98 SEK. Adjusting for TXI; 1.00 USD = 7.71 SEK (=1.29 x 5.98).
I guess this suggests that we still get a pretty good deal in the US on the Turbo X compared to the Swedes….;)
Just for the record, Canadian pricing does not include GST and PST, the latter of which varies depending on province.
In Ontario, all adds up to 13% (5% GST + 8% PST).
^ ouch.
Here in Australia our GST is factored in to the final price we see at list. The GST included is in the fine print.
That always annoyed me about Canada while I was there. And pennies. Why have pennies? And 4-way intersections instead of roundabouts.
Tom add to Kroum and Joemama - Canadians have also paid most (not all) of their health care and higher education costs before getting their take-home pay. But I still don’t see how that is relevant to the differing costs, except in VAT system (including Canada’s, Europe, etc.), the tax load is built in at each level then claimed back by the next, EXCEPT for the final purchaser who gets the whole bill. It would indeed be interesting to know the wholesale cost to the dealer in each country. In some countries, there may conceivable be extra layers of “middlemen” (such as private rather than GM distributors) taking an extra large slice. I think the smaller differences from the US are profit-taking, but the big ones are mostly taxes. Perhaps the difference needs to be adjusted as well, however, based on the average untaxed annual salary per person, in US dollars. There’s no perfect way to figure this out.
It’s the same in the USA with taxes and pennies. And yes, I wish we had roundabouts here in the USA as well.
I think there will be a revolution in European countries when they list actual prices and taxes separately. Imagine buying a Turbo X for €50K and see a seperate line item for €40K in taxes.
Prices and taxes in different countries are always very difficult to compare. Instead of Big Macs, it probably makes more sense to compare loafs of bread or some other essential items.
Kroum, we have a luxury tax here in BC as well so add another 13pc on top of PST/GST.
Swade, we do have some roundabouts….Canadians just dont know how to drive. The attitude here is “Im alright Jack…..!”.
Turbo X manual, no options added - Finland 64000€ incl. tax. That´s US$78000.
Some background:
Turbo X suffers badly of our new tax system. It´s based highly on CO2 emissions. From my point of view the X has way too high CO2 value due to high fuel consumption.
Put it this way - 9-5 Aero sedan 191kW - CO2 213g/km, Turbo X sedan 206kW - CO2 254g/km.
And one more I´d always like to point out - BMW 330xi 200kW - CO2 193 g/km.
Due to CO2 based tax system, the BM above dropped it´s price about 3600€ and X got rise of 3500€ from the original price.
So there´s 7000€ difference just because of Co2. And I truly believe that this is how CO2 emission will be handled in the future. But more aggressively.
2.8V6t gives huge advance… to it´s competitors in Finland.
For this reason I would never buy the X in Finland. It´s way over priced compared to competitors, considering what it has to offer.
Wulf - I thought big macs were essential in the US?
@Wulf: listing the actual price without taxes won’t change anything. They’re being listed like that already today. Some people buy their cars in Germany for that reason, but this is a minority.
it can’t be compare for currency valuation becouse it isn’t local made product. We just can compare use Saab the same prices for Turbo X for different countries or not. We need substruct customs fees (up to 40% in Russia), special taxes, VAT (18% in Russia) and logistics costs from retail price for it.
I think GST, luxury tax, customs fees, Certificate of Entitlement etc should all be included, because at the end of the day, that is what it will cost an individual to own a Saab in their respective countries.
In Hungary the base price it’s about 14.000.000 HUF (56.000 EUR or 87.500 USD) including all taxes.
Shyang, I thought that too, but in many instances you can’t find that out easily without going through the motions of buying one. I figured that if people knew (or could easily get) the price from Saab to post here then that would be sufficient for the purposes of this post.
Many times, essential govt charges like sales taxes etc will be included in the price you get from Saab, whereas “on-road” costs probably won’t.
As long as we’re cognisant of the fact that it can change a little from place to place then we can still get a reasonable estimate.
According to the DN review, a Turbo-X costs from 891500 NOK in Norway. That would be the equivalent of US$177 420 according to Yahoo Finance.
Norwegian prices:
$177,440 (manual) out of which $104,609 is taxes and $184,960 (automatic) out of which $109,237 is taxes. Prices are with 25 % vat included.
Hello Joemama,
I do not see how this is relevant but when did you live in Europe? I pay around 300 euro every month for my healthcare… And a littte more for gasoline…
Official Norwegian price: NOK 861,400.
Source: http://www.saab.no/main/image/2008/markets/NO/no/brochure/spek_pris_9-3_MY08-2.pdf
How on earth has this pricing scale turned into a health care issue.
VAT is totally unrelated to Income, retirement, health or any other tax that is index linked to your pay, which ultimately effects your net income.
Buyiing a car for private use does not effect you monthly income does it.
The euro is not overpriced. If it were then the eurozone’s economy would be in a slump. But recently there was a report in Germany’s FOCUS magazine stating that europe is still seeing growth in the economy even though the $ and the GBP have weakend.
Maybe the BMI has had its day of having the US$ as a currency benchmark and that now the Euro is a far more stable currency. Maybe we need a BWI (Brat Wurst Index)
Swade, I think what you are doing will give us pretty accurate figures.
As long as taxes, etc that are in the retail price of the Turbo X are not intentionally removed, you should have realistic figures.
I had no idea that the CO2 emission is so high for the Turbo X. I always assumed Saab would be greener than most other car manufacturers.
Off topic, I remember a full page ad in some newspapers about 10 years back that Saab put up. It said something to the effect of how the air coming out of a Saab’s exhaust is cleaner than the air in London and in a way, driving a Saab will actually help clean up the air in London.
It was then followed up by a tongue in cheek apology that pretty much said the same thing.
Anyone remember that ad?
Not that I want to change the original purpose of the piece, but probably to do a proper comparison for a car you should be looking at the long term costs, not just the up front price, which is subject to all sorts of ‘one time’ riders, taxes and extensions to the original price.
For example, here in the UK there is no special tax added to the car beyond the standard VAT and the first years car tax (that will change next year, when the first year car tax price will double).
But those pesky car tax thresholds come back to bite you each year…the kicker for the Turbo X in the UK is the yearly car tax. The Turbo X is just over the threshold (by just 8g of CO2), so that means that it will cost 400 GBP to tax it this year (instead of 200 GBP), 440 GBP next year, and 455 GBP the year after. That’s likely to go up too, if the current practice of taxing the easy ‘car owner’ target continues.
Add to that the petrol costs (of which a significant amount is tax) and the cost starts to add up. I suspect if you factored in the costs in the US, the Turbo X index would look even worse in the UK, and in some other european countries worse again still.
Despite the costs, it wasn’t quite enough to convince me not to buy a Turbo X last week, but it was certainly a serious consideration in the equation.
The Turbo-X will set you back 166,666 Lt in Lithuania (That’s $74,740)
Don’t know what Dollar they’re talking of, but the Euro sure is not at $1.22 (US) on foreign exchange markets, more like $1.55. Makes a big difference for the overvaluation of the Euro.
On the other hand, if the Big Mac was published last year, then they’re right. But the prices calculated here are then wrong, because the Euro was already way higher than 1.22 when the Turbo X pricing came out meaning the BMI is not accurate anymore
BTW, the 3-letter code for Lithuanian Litas is LTL.
Checked the price in Latvia too. Turbo-X is LVL 41,752 there (USD 93,107). Seems like us Lithuanians are getting quite a decent deal!
Ian, it’s an historical quote just to explain the index. No resemblance to current rates.
I love your graph!
If I moved to the US, I can buy 3 Turbo Xs for what I will pay for 1.
Look what I found:
T
he TURBO-X costs only
US $ 36.771,-
at SAAB Military Sales!
check their website for pricing:
http://www.saab-militarysales.com
Prices of all models:
http://www.saab-militarysales.com/allmodels/overview.html
Wulf–the reasons why the Economist goes with the Big Mac and not a more “essential” item are gone over fairly well in the wikipedia article on the Big Mac Index. The Big Mac is a nifty compilation of different goods (labor, a bit of capital, various agricultural inputs) which is standard all over the world (unlike bread.)
The Military Sales program is for serving NATO forces who are eligible for VAT free purchases.
Agree with Zippy - Canadians can’t drive. Toronto is particularly bad. I think if we had roundabouts here, people would crash trying to figure out how to get out of one.
Bulgarian pricing as per the official dealer for the country posted at the local club’s forums: 132,000 levs, which translated to USD 105,137. Thsi price includes all options such as satnav et al., which come standard.
Here in France base price for the TurboX is 51 000 EUR, i.e 79 800 USD.
I don’t have the prices in mind anymore, but it is cheaper thant a A4 quattro V6, or a BMW 335xi with the same équipment…