The Financial Gazette

Top Gear with Richard Wiley

Spa not bubbling
Not too many F1 fans would disagree that Spa Francorchamps is the most beautiful circuit on the calendar and that the physical beauty of the Ardennes forest is matched by an exciting, fast, sweeping circuit loved by nearly every driver. Notwithstanding all these accolades, the Belgian GP was a massive flop as far as luring spectators is concerned.
A mere 52 500 fans pitched up. Sure, the indifferent weather didn’t help but there’s nothing new about variable conditions in this region.
The root cause of the feeble crowd is simple to find and I won’t be offering a prize of a weekend with Bernie Ecclestone if you get the answer right: Massive cost is the number one reason and sadly, the promoters are forced to ask stratospheric entry and grandstand charges in order to meet the iniquitous fees demanded by Ecclestone and the F1 rights holders.
I would have thought that these rights holders are drowning in enough wealth already, but it seems not.   With the exception of Silverstone, every GP this season has been notable for swathes of empty grandstand seats and enough space within standing areas for Pakistan’s cricketers to practice bowling no balls.  
Just to break even, the Spa organisers reckoned they needed 65 000 people through the turnstiles; so the shortfall this year was substantial.  
It’s actually worse than it looks on paper because at the height of one Michael Schumacher’s powers, crowds of way over 100 000 were commonplace. But today, would you be prepared to pay £500 for a  grandstand seat so cramped that even a sardine would cry enough. Getting to that seat often involves ploughing through slush and mud and once you’ve identified your tiny pew, you have to hope that it doesn’t rain because many of these stands don’t even have a roof over them. And remember, the £500 is often on top of a general entrance fee.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating that it is/was cheaper to fly from London to Atlanta, US, to attend the usually brilliant Petit Le Mans 1 000-mile race at Road Atlanta. At the time I investigated, which was some nine months in advance of the early October race, it was possible to get a return air ticket for £286. An entire race event ticket, which covers two qualifying days and race day itself, is available for US$75. This allows access to all points on the magnificent circuit and even permits entry right into the heart of the pits on qualifying days.
Further, the facilities are mostly much better than you’ll find on the F1 circuit and the cost of food and refreshments is miles lower.
If I hadn’t been heading for the Paris Motor Show, which unfortunately, opens its doors to the press on exactly the days that the Audis, Peugeots, Porsches, Ferraris, et al, will be hurtling around Road Atlanta, the lure of good-value-America would have been hard to resist.
Car or bike?
I’m often asked which is faster round a track — car or bike? The answer is the car and by a country mile too.   To illustrate the huge difference, I looked up the figures for the Nurburgring GP circuit purely because as I’m writing this, I’m watching the World Superbike race on this circuit.
The F1 lap record goes back to 2004 and stands at a mite over one minute and twenty-one seconds. By contrast, the cream of the world’s Superbikes which look so blisteringly fast are lucky to get round in 1.55min. Work out for yourself how quickly the bikes would be lapped.
No one wins
Over the years, I have expressed my strong opposition to the mass importation of second hand vehicles for re-sale. My view hasn’t in any way changed, particularly because if the duty structure on new cars was reviewed to remove, once and for all, the punitive element that’s been built-in for an eternity, there would be no need to import used vehicles, many of which may, in fact, be wholly unsuited to use in darkest Africa. We won’t even go into the thorny issue of lack of back-up.
However, I do feel there is a big difference between importing for re-sale and importing for personal use.  Just to illustrate how everyone loses with the present ill-considered duty structure: A friend who’s resident in Harare gave me the following details. His son has reached car-driving age; so a set of wheels came under consideration.   Given the cost of anything new or relatively young in Zim, his thoughts turned to the Far East used car suppliers and in their catalogues he discovered a 2.0 litre Golf 4 automatic advertised with an acceptable mileage behind it.
The price was US$3 000 which is probably less than half what you’d shell out for a similar vehicle in SA. Shipping to Durban was quoted at a very reasonable US$700, but now came        the hurdles as the SA government will not allow “passage on their own wheels” of used cars thanks to past antics of crooks involved in mass importation.
The quote to transport the car from Durban to Harare was an outrageous R14 000. That’s three times the shipping cost from the other side of the world!
Given the inexcusable duty system which ensures that all transport and handling costs are included in the government’s cut, not to mention a penalty duty owing to the car’s age and VAT applied on the aforementioned duties, the total cost of a car which started out at US$3 000 escalated to a completely unacceptable US$11 000!
The young lad doesn’t have his car and the government doesn’t have one cent in duty. As usual, everyone suffers thanks to the short-sighted punitive duty structure which continues to treat cars as a luxury and not an essential part of living in the 21st century.  When will they learn?
SA car sales
August car sales in SA rocketed ahead of the ill-considered CO2 tax which was highlighted in last week’s article.
Top seller by a country mile was the “old” Polo, renamed Vivo, with nearly 3 000 examples finding owners, but the passenger car figures by manufacturer look like this:
1. Volkswagen 6 527
2. Toyota 4 272
3. GMSA 3 898
4. Ford/Mazda 3 312
5. BMW/Mini 1 985
6. Mercedes 1 842

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