What would you buy if...

[Mutley75]

What would you buy in the highly unlikely event the naysayers are right and post Brexit it’s either impossible or ludicrously expensive to buy German cars?

I’m firmly in the VAG camp but in the above scenario, all European brands are out except for any which are built on home soil. So if your choice was limited to British, American and Asian cars, what would it be instead of a GTI?

[Philb280]

Mustang

Or Aston if I won the lottery

[davyk31]

That would be tricky as has German cars now for years. VW, BMW and Audi has been my last number.

[dubber36]

What would you buy in the highly unlikely event the naysayers are right and post Brexit it’s either impossible or ludicrously expensive to buy German cars?

Secondhand.

[P6GTD]

This subject is the reason I decided to change early and order a new 245 last October in order to de-risk Brexit as far as cars were concerned.
What surprised and surprises me is how little this has been discussed on the forum.
I think I am one of very few posters who has ever even mentioned the “b” word!

[Mutley75]

I did the same. My pcp wasn’t due till September but with the new model A3/Golf due this year (but possibly not available in the spec I want, with decent discounts in September) and with Brexit uncertainty, I decided to change in March. I suspect Brexit won’t affect availability of German cars and I very much doubt they’ll be subject to tariffs as that will force many buyers to look at Japanese/Korean cars instead. What is likely to happen is further devaluation of the £ vs the Euro which will push prices up in the short term. As for Brexit, I fully expect it to be postponed via extension of article 50 and I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t even happen at all now. .

[fredgroves]

If you take a worse case scenario, which looks like this:

1) There is import duty (ie a tariff) on EU made cars  - you'd only do this to protect your domestic market or favour another source of cars (eg USA). We don't have a domestic maker (yet) but we do have foreign car makers assembling in the UK (whether they stay here when they are currently located here to access the EU market is another question). Tariff of probably something like 2.5%, but by no means guaranteed because as I say, tariffs are about protectionism or favouritism.

2) A nasty "B" crashes the pound and exchange rates against the Euro fall massively. More likely and the results of which could be quite huge. The Euro is currently bumping along at just under a pound, a few points of shift will be almost a percentage point each... could easily add 5-10%.

3) A nasty "B" causes mass damage to the UK economy, killing businesses, raising unemployment which then depresses wages - making already expensive imports even more expensive relatively to UK workers. Mass damage most likely caused by increased costs from #1 and #2.

So #1 is controllable by the UK government, the other 2 are not and are driven by market forces.

On the other hand, to prevent this, a forward thinking government could offer someone like VAG or BMW a tax free deal to build a plant in the UK for the UK market. Its probably not a good idea, but it could happen.

I'm going to avoid saying if any of this is good or bad and just stick to impact analysis

[mcmaddy]

Article in one of last week's papers mentioned Germany are crapping themselves over Brexit as they have 112 billion invested in UK business and economy, Holland are the same.

[Simeon]

Yeah we need to stop selling ourselves short, we are a massive market and the Gov needs to get a backbone in these negotiations

[fredgroves]

Article in one of last week's papers mentioned Germany are crapping themselves over Brexit as they have 112 billion invested in UK business and economy, Holland are the same.

Keeping things specific here, how much of that is VAG?

What have VAG got invested in the UK apart from a sales operation?

As I said above, how does the UK Government do anything to protect VAG's sales operation in the UK from the exchange rate and the broader economy crash? "tariff free trade" won't do that will it?