A Porsche for a Chery

One man's Chery QQ is another man's Porsche Boxster Black Edition - if the Porsche man were shopping for a car in the United States, that is.

Soaring Certificate of Entitlement (COE) premiums and a robust Singapore dollar have made the cheapest passenger car here - the manual Chery QQ 0.8 - the equivalent of most European luxury badges elsewhere.

Even at a promotional net price of S$74,988, the Chery QQ gets you the Porsche Boxster Black Edition at US$55,200 in the US.

The above fron an article in Business Times (Singapore).

Some other car comparisons:

• a Toyota Corolla in Singapore cost the same as a Jaguar XFR in the US
• a BMW 520i cost the same as a Ferrari California
• a Lexus LS 460 cost the same as a Rolls-Royce Ghost

Property in Singapore is of course also very expensive, what a HDB flat can buy:

• a 3-room HDB in Bedok buys a 12 acre island in Maine, US
• a 4-room HDB in Serangoon buys a seaview villa in Spain
• a 5-room HDB in Bukit Batok buys a mansion in Georgia, US
• a 5-room HDB in Bukit Merah buys a 2-acre island in the Caribbean

Interestingly enough, Singapore is one of the cheapest countries in which to buy the new iPad. The cheapest model went for US$ 527 at the online Apple store. Buyers in Europe had to pay at least US$ 600. For most, this will have to be consolation enough if house and horsepower remain out of reach.