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Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

Canada needs cheaper cars than US manufacturers want to provide. US brand cars have all been going higher dollar and further up market in recent years.

Quebec is famous for the "Quebec Special". Cars with manual everything. No AC. Manual windows. Completely stripped down to be as affordable/disposable as possible. Also the roads are absolute shit, they never wash off the salt, there used to be no inspections and title-washing is common practice there.

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Is this a thing? I have never heard about that, living in QC for the last 20 years and owned and rode dozens of cars. The car salesman looked at me as a rare species when I wanted a manual Soul. I have never seen an no AC or manual windows car here.

Sorry, I'm old. I last lived in Canada 20 years ago. Times do change, but yes this very much used to be a thing. Base model/optionless imports still are, however.

Everything I said about the roads and title washing still applies.

Also, https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/06/quebecs-obsession-...

The Hyundai my parents have been driving for the past 7 years does not have AC nor automatic windows :). They live in Montreal, and hate the lack of AC during the summer, but it is what it is - car is cheaper without AC.

> Canada needs cheaper cars than US manufacturers want to provide.

So does the U.S.

That's an opinion. One I agree with in principal, but not reflected in sales figures.

Also I'd be willing to bet that if interest rates dropped, car purchasing would skyrocket even at current prices.

People in the U.S. have to own a car. There are no inexpensive options any longer.

Car loans would be ticking time bomb on the U.S. economy. All it takes are waves of layoffs and therefore droves of unemployed people saddled with car loans.

US car sales are pretty consistent between 12mil & 17mil per year going back to the mid 70s, which spans a few recessions at this point...

> One I agree with in principal, but not reflected in sales figures.

In the absence of perfect competition and perfect information, one cannot infer from the absence of sales that there is no demand for item X.

They are certainly going to get them! Apparently zero tariffs on Chinese made EVs coming into Canada, so they will have EV's of at least same quality as Tesla, but half price (e.g. see Marques Brownlee's recent Xiaomi review).

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