Its O.K Toyota.

Not always.

The maths simply don't allow for it, and that's the trouble with the Toyota demographic, they don't seem to ever do the maths.

Take the buyers of those $12'000 1.0 Yaris's 3 or 4 years back. I said, don't buy one of those, buy a Punto of the same year for half the price. The Yaris can't maintain that price, but no, we even had knuckle draggers come along and try to pretend that the Punto would be the one to depreciate.

Of course the Yaris's have lost $6000 - $7000 and the Punto only about $1500.

If they financed that extra $6000 or so its an even greater cost.

No logic.

(and no the buyers of the 1.3 Yaris's haven't fared any better. they just got to drive a slightly less rubbish car for the time.)

Cheapest Yaris on Trademe is $8k. It is seven years old with 268,000km.

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

The import version! As opposed to the full service history Fiat you will compare it to!

Import and NZ New Yaris's have crashed similar amounts. Import and NZ new Punto's went for much the same money and still do. So yes you could have actually had a NZ New Punto for approx half import Yaris money if you wanted.

You can try and nit pick your way out of it if you want. The numbers are what the numbers are. If I had known at the time the threads would start to expire at 12 months I would have kept some of the old ones for occasions such as this.

This is also part of the reason why I don't get as super excited about the Punto's as I once did. They are still a good car for the money and about the best of the bunch of those little sub $5000 cars. However they are not the amazing bargain they were when they were a much better car AND half the money.

While not as confident in the outcome as I was for the Yaris's and Swifts one of the next Toyota's I suspect will take a nosedive will be the older Prado/Landcruiser type stuff. Some of those are just absurdly over priced for a very average product. There are good alternatives coming through the ranks for less money too.

Overall, I think the Toyota tax is easing. people in the secondhand market are waking up to the much better alternatives. I am just not seeing the nut bar prices for regular Toyota cars (as opposed to 4WD's) that I once was in the 6 - 10 years old bracket.

Oh and BTW, I have actually been quite conservative and very fair in my recollection. There were even some Yaris's that were 3 times the price of the Punto of simliar year. However in fairness that would be comparing a well priced Punto to a higher (possibly over or keen dealer) priced Yaris. Still, people did buy Yaris's for that money.

Your confusing VW group with VW, The group encompassing all brands eg audi,porsche, skoda, seat, lamborghini etc may be close, but as an individual brand i dont think they are even close. Going out and purchasing more brands to gather market share is not the same or even close to developing the worlds single most popular brand. Although Hyundai are getting close