Quote Originally Posted by racerx1979 View Post
I spoke with a contact who works for a WRC team and he mentioned an interesting point about the R4 cars. He said countries like Indonesia and even Australia have large taxes on imports. People who want a Skoda or Fiesta R5 in Indonesia to compete on the APRC would have to pay a large amount on taxes to import the cars. The R4 class allowing people to add their kit into any car that has a certain number of cars manufactured overcomes this issue. So a lot of people in Indonesia, Australia and other countries where import duty taxes are insane will benefit from these cars. Hence why Oreca are showing the Toyota Etios as a base car. This little Toyota was mainly for South America and Asian markets. The same markets which pay hefty duties if trying to import a car which is not sold in their region... So the target for R4 is most likely not Europe...
Firstly, let me introduce myself.

My name is Marv, and i'm a rally enthusiast and freelance journalist. In my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/indonesianrallyfanbase/) I post quite a lot about the R4 because rallying at here is currently suffering, which one of the causes is lack of exciting cars on 4WD category, currently only fielding old Group N cars.

No people buy and run R5's at national championship because:
1. As the quote above said, the import tax is very expensive, which is 120%.

2. To made things worse, Indonesia goverment banned people from import used cars. Rally cars must run thru public roads on road section.

3. So, for example a new Skoda Fabia R5 price is (what i found from internet) €221,000. And with 120% tax = €265,200, which if converted into Rupiah means 4,2 billion, which is far too much.

4. Lack of manufacturers which build R5. From 9 manufacturers (both factory & privateer), there are only Hyundai, Peugeot, Proton and Mitsubishi whose sold their road cars in Indonesia (Ford withdrew last year). And all of them are quite inferior compared to Toyota & Honda, especially Peugeot & proton. That also means it's difficult to import spare parts.

There are no Mirage R5 at here, which the road car is quite popular on Indonesian road.

I, and many other people at here, is hopeful about R4 because we can build cars from stuff at here (Etios for example, which at here named Etios Valco). We know the complete car are still expensive, for example:

R4 kit + 120% tax (don't know the exact percentage): 108.000+22.000=130.000 euros
Brand new/used Toyota Etios Valco (at here Toyota's re-sell price are strong): 9500 euros
Manufacturing & development price: 6400 euros

So, the total=145.900 euros, or let say it 150.000 euros, which is 2.4 billions if converted to Rupiahs. That's quite a half fron R5 car completed with tax.

And there are some cars which cost even less than Etios Valco, like Honda Brio, which costs 7300 euros, or Datsun Go.

My calculations could be wrong though, but we try to save money as much as possible, and for us R4 is perfect. I admit that Oreca can cut something unimportant/too expensive to make it cheaper.