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Comment by senectus1 | Hacker News Reader

I know that here in Australia its damned hard to get a car.

5 months ago I placed an order, would have been happy with a 2021 model but they don't have any... so I'm stuck waiting till October THIS YEAR... over a years wait. for one of the most popular cars on the Australian market.

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Looks like a similar situation to car sales in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. You had to wait for years to be able to buy a new one, even if it was the popular model of the day. Some people made money by registering to the queue and selling their spot.

Trabant, Wartburg, Moskvitch, Zastava, Lada, Skoda,... I guess all of them had a long waiting lists. I don't know if it was a joke but I've heard that people would leave their spots in last will and testimony to their kids.

Not sure about others but in the '80s nobody waited for Zastava. All over the country foreign cars were "assembled" (Opel, Renault, Citroen, WV Golf...) so while Zastava priduced cheaper cars they weren't the only game in the town and they kinda produced enough to satisfy demand (actually I believe that they would prefered that demand for their cars was even larger). Not sure about 60's and 70's though.

Can you say what you are getting? I got a RAV4 which I ordered in Nov 2020 and collected in late Mar 2021. Not long after the wait list blew out to 8 months.

It might be fairly easy to get a second-hand hail-damaged-but-mechanically-fine bargain. The flipside of that is the potential insurance hell invited by that situation.

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