What should the Australian government do, by way of industry support? Support a terminal car industry, or boost hi-tech companies with global sales potential? The decision should be a no-brainer

Nuance Communications and Spanson Inc are two companies you’ve probably never even heard of. But if you’ve used Siri – the voice-activated assistant locked inside an iPhone 4S – you’ve used Nuance’s speech software. Nuance also sells the software for in-car entertainment and navigation systems.

Spanson makes NOR flash memory chips that make Nuance’s software work faster and enjoy larger lexicons. So the pair is in something of a symbiotic relationship.

Wouldn't investing in an industry like this make more sense for Australia than dumping hundreds of millions more taxpayer dollars into an industry on life support, with no real hope for the future?

Quarter-billion-dollar Holden prop-up deal virtually done, but four experts highly critical of Holden's long-term taxpayer funding

GM Holden’s addiction to your tax dollars is getting to be about as dignified, and as justifiable, as the performance of a strung-out, crack-addicted whore in South Central Los Angeles. “Australia’s own” Holden currently has its hand out for – wait for it – an additional quarter of a billion dollars jointly funded from the Federal and South Australian Governments. And if current news reports are accurate it appears those funds will shortly be forthcoming.

It’s undignified when corporations threaten governments, and the implied threat here is pretty clear: give us the money or the jobs are toast.

Just three weeks after the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies (CES) slammed taxpayer-funded subsidies for GM Holden as (paraphrasing) bad public policy, it appears the floodgates on another officially sanctioned tsunami of your taxpayer funds are about to open.

Twilight, eat your heart out

Luxury 4WDs are the fastest-growing segment of the car market. They're also a way to beat inflation, losing less value over time than their luxury car stablemates

Luxury 4WDs are starting to stack up as a real hedge against vehicular depreciation. The Bob Browns and Penny Wongs of this world might revile them as CO2-belching harbingers of envirogeddon, but the Australian used vehicle market is in love with them. (Used luxury 4WDs, not Bob or Penny, that is…)

Luxury 4WDs are often faring better today in the resale stakes than similarly priced luxury cars wearing the same premium badges, as our case studies below demonstrate.

Would you buy a new car online?

This concept is repugnant to new car dealers, but as a species the choice to adapt or die is already upon them. Most are, apparently, choosing to dodo-up.

Like vinyl records previously, car dealerships face extinctionOnce you decide to buy a particular new car it becomes, effectively, a commodity – at least inasmuch as the particular new car offered by Dealership X is identical to the same model offered by Dealership Y. And, with commodities, the only variable that really matters is price.

Dealership sales staff are well established in decline. Previously (before iPods played HD video) a salesperson could inform you about the nuances and technicalities of your particular new car. Dealerships were a valuable repositiry of information and guidance. Not any more. These days, serious customers routinely

Have you noticed that even today's small cars are huge?

You can’t open a newspaper or a magazine these days without staring at a headline about the obesity epidemic. But it’s not just waistlines that are rapidly expanding – vehicles are, too.

There have been tremendous advances in efficiency technology - and these are often offset by each new model getting heavier and heavier. This occurs because each car company is obliged to offer more with the next new model: more space, more features, more legroom, more power - more everything. It's a prime motovator to get the last (say) Commodore owner into the next model.

Cars have grown out of all proportion, too

In fact a whole new class of vehicle

TIP 1: Buy your next new car at the end of the month

When you buy a new car, timing is everything. New-car dealerships have very aggressive sales targets, and they are accountable for those projected new-car sales on a monthly basis. Serious financial incentives are paid by wholesalers (car companies) to the dealers that meet their targets; those that miss their target lose their bonuses.

New car dealerships also pay interest on their

New car dealerships work like this: when a car company (the manufacturer of the car, or the importer of it) delivers a car to a dealer, it becomes the dealer’s property. The dealer pays for it on credit; he needs to sell it to reduce the interest cost of holding it. This is true for every vehicle you can see on the showroom floor, as well as every vehicle you can’t see in the dealer’s warehouse.

Essentially, dealerships use the equivalent of a big, fat

When you’re buying a new car, always leave your trade-in at home. New car dealers love to confuse buyers and obfuscate the deal’s economics with trade-ins. Sometimes they offer what appears to be a high trade-in price but refuse to discount the new car you’re buying – with a better financial result for them than had you just bought the car with no trade-in and simply driven a hard bargain. Coming to grips with whether you’re getting a good deal on a new car, or not, slips further from your grasp whenever a new car dealer starts cooking the books with your trade-in.

You should also realize that new

It would be a solid-gold miracle if you could find exactly the right make, model and variant of the new car you want, right down to the colour, the trim and the options. Bottom line: you should be prepared to

Every aspect of buying a new car is negotiable – except the statutory charges. Most people hate negotiating, and they especially hate negotiating over money, and extra-especially they hate negotiating over a big-ticket item like a new car. Many – most – new car dealers understand this disinclination to bargain hard, and exploit it to their advantage.

Here are a few strategies

TIP 7: Have your finances sorted

There’s no point merely going with the flow inside the new car dealership, and taking them up on their finance offer – at least not without first shopping around for the finance, if only to convince yourself what terms, conditions and rates constitute a good deal.

Dealerships are paid a hefty commission to convert buyers to the

TIP 8: Consider run-outs & demonstrators

When you’re in the market for a new car, you might want to consider buying a ‘run-out’ model or a demonstrator. The two terms are commonly used, but they mean very different things.

Run Out Models

Run-out sales occur when there’s a fair amount of existing stock in the market, and a new model is either just released or just about to be released. Let’s say you’re

TIP 9: Check the likely depreciation

There are two ways to lose money on a new car. The first way to lose money on a new car is to pay too much for it at the outset. Most of the tips here are devoted to getting the sharpest price you can, at the point of purchase.

However, you can also lose bucket-loads of money to

TIP 10: Dealership dirty tricks

When you visit a new car dealer, here’s the basic position: the dealership staff are used to selling cars (you probably buy one every few years, at best), the dealership is used to negotiating over money (you’re probably not), the dealership staff know whether they’re under pressure to make a few extra sales that month (you don’t). They’re match fit; you’re not.

The bottom line here is that all car dealers

Buying a car? Here's how to save 30 per cent on your next car by letting the first owner bleed all over it - financially

The Buying a Used Car Bottom Line: Save 30% Over New

You can halve the absolute cost of depreciation by buying a two-year-old used car. You’ll get essentially the same model as the ones on sale now (in general) and 30 per cent off the price. It’ll still have a year’s worth of warranty, or more, and very low kilometers on the clock. (The average used car in Australia has about 15,000km under its wheels for every year of service.)

Buying a Used car? Find out about the 'Goldilocks' age - not too old, not too new: just right (and why this is so)

• Buying a used car at the right time in its life can save you heaps.
• Depreciation is one of the biggest costs involved in owning a car.
• A two-year-old used car generally represents the ideal age, and excellent value – you get many of the benefits of a new car, at a significant discount around 30 per cent (compared with the new price).