Changes you want to see in the automotive industry

[Franco Cozzo]

This thread is about what changes you would like to see in the automotive industry, there are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers, an opportunity to get on the blower about what currently grinds your gears with anything to do with 2 or 4 wheels (or 700 wheels - rokwiz) and your proposal to fix these perceived problems.

The only rules are:

No AU Falcons
You offer up a problem you need to provide a suggestion on how you want this to change.

What grinds Franco's gears:

Australian Design Regulations - post loss of Australian manufacturing industry:

This one really gives me the ****s, why do we still have specific design regulations for our market when we have no industry to protect?

I think that we should 'deregulate' our automotive industry to a limited degree - Australia drops the requirements for cars/trucks to meet the current ADRs, any car/truck that meets US, Japanese, South Korean and European design and emissions regulations is now able to be registered and driven on our roads.

This will allow better choice for consumers in Australia because auto manufacturers don't have to modify their platforms to meet specific regulations for our tiny market.

Remove the requirements for cars to be RHD:

The fact you can drive a 30 year old LHD car but not a new one is ridiculous, yes there are compromises with operating a car on the opposite side of the road it was designed for but the onus of this should be on the owner of the vehicle, one of my colleagues daily drives a LHD BMW M3 without too many issues.

Being able to buy a car completely online:

This one has always given me the ****s, even back when I bought my first new car over a decade ago, why can't I go to Ford's website, build and price my car, pay for it and my local Ford dealership drops it off in my driveway within a couple of hours or next business day (assuming it's in stock) - given electronic payments can clear within minutes now.

From a customer experience perspective, buying a car sucks. At minimum I'm up for a 30km drive to my closest car dealership, I have to wonder around a car yard waiting for some smarmy ******* to acknowledge me, then deal with someone who is trying to wheel out all the sales tactics in the book on a product I know more about than they do.

The last time I bought a car on behalf of my employer I had to wonder around the dealership, then deal with some moron in office attire with his shirt half untucked, while he spent 15 minutes looking through his messy desk for paperwork for the car I wanted, then walking around confused asking others for the paperwork who had no idea on what he was on about.

Then backwards and forwards with phone calls because he wouldn't email me, tying up my phone line with frivolous bull****.

It took 4 visits to the dealership and a couple weeks to finally get our new ute, that again I had to go pick up because they wouldn't drive it 15km down the freeway.

Add in the lady in the low cut top trying to sucker you into overpriced bull**** you can organise yourself at a much cheaper price while supporting independent business.

Preferably I'd like to avoid all the nonsense of attending a car dealership in person, I'm not proposing that it goes entirely online but that there's the option for customers like me to be able to option up and pay for their new car and then have it delivered to your door, this would be a productivity gain for a dealership without having people wondering around their dealership and offer the ability for a cost saving as you can get away with less sales staff and fancy bull****.