The more things change..."Unfair to compare"?

[2011G6E]

Just been cleaning out my shed preparing to sell the house in Bundy, and was reading some of my vast collection of old car magazines as I was packing them away.

One thing that struck me was the similarities to things in those magazines and things being discussed in the motoring press and here on this forum today. Things don't appear to have changed much...

One item was "is it fair to compare foreign cars to Australian cars?", especially things like BMW's and Mercedes Benzes, with our similar, large, rear-drive sedans?
One article was from Car Australia magazine, from 1984, discussing the problems with the Camira. The other was in Wheels magazine from 1992, and discussed the issues with the then-new EA Falcon. They both said similar things, such as that "Local car makers must learn to match the quality control standards of imported cars". They also made a comment about the EA issues and that while claims were made in marketing that it was a "world class" car it "certainly wasn't a Benz W124".

So here we are, well into the 21st century, and still we see people complaining about quality problems with thier new Falcons and Commodores, owners getting annoyed, companies saying we should be happy with what we get, and even owners forgiving them thier sometimes-serious QA problems by saying "aw bless 'em, they do the best for the price they charge", and that it isn't fair to compare them with BMW's and Benzes.

But is it unfair?

The local manufacturers have been building these large cars for half a century...by now they should have a fair idea how to screw together a car correctly, and how to run an efficient quality control program. One owner beset by a series of errors in a Camira was told by the frustrated dealer that "it seems the manufacturer just trusts us to catch all the faults and fix them at the first service".
Sadly, similar statements echoed down the years to follow with other car makers here.

So why has nothing changed? I suspect it's because they know we are a captive audience, with car makers here protected from the big bad world outside our shores, taxing the buggery out of anything that might compete with our beloved (and flawed) local product.

Lower class BMW's and Benzes are luxury cars here for one reason, and one reason only: import duties and taxes slapped on them to artificially inflate the price, coupled with a huge barrier stopping us from driving new left hand drive cars here freely, unlike just about anywhere else in the world.
Got to Germany, and you will see taxi ranks full of cars that in Australia would be parked in the CEO's reserved parking space.

It's always fun to do a bit of reading of old car magazines to see the opinions and stuff that went on at the time in the motoring industry.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, it appears...