@ayilar what was the asking price for the cars in the US? (...) A year ago 1 Euro was about 1,05$. Today it's 1,18$. That makes buying a car overseas very attractive at the moment of you want to flip it here
One answer and one comment (not political, fear not).
Answer: I do not remember what the 2dr went for, but what I do remember is that it seemed to be a good deal.
@Rustyrodknocker looked at the car and hopefully will be able to chime in. For the 4dr, the ask was $4.5k US. If I had to make a guess, the buyer probably got it for $3.5k. Let's say he paid 3k euro. The car looks a bit cleaned up but not refurbished or anything -- so at his current ask of 9k euros, he's trying to make about 6k euros (gross return) for importing the car. That is IF he can get 9k. My guess is the margin is similar on the 2dr.
Comment: compared to the US dollar, at $1.18/1 euro, the euro certainly has more purchasing power internationally than it did last year. Remember, though, that the euro has fluctuated in value between 0.83 and 1.62 over the course of the past two decades, with about 1.18(!) as the average value.
This said, whether the euro
currently has "too much" purchasing power is a somewhat different question. To investigate, let us assume for a moment that internationally-tradable goods and services should cost roughly the same in different countries (taking taxes and exchange rates into account) -- that is what economists call the "law of one price" (LOP). As a casual empirical experiment, I just looked at the price of an iPhone 12 mini with 128GB of memory. It is $779 (excluding carrier-specific discounts) on the US Apple Store. The same phone, in the Eurozone, costs 869 euros
with 20% VAT. Taking off the tax and multiplying by today's exchange rate, this euro price amounts to just over 854 dollars (869x1.18/1.2). Comparing $779 and $854 suggests that the LOP does not hold in this case. In other words, either (i) you are right and the euro is overpriced / worth almost 10% "too much" on the USD market or (ii) Apple has different pricing powers and/or market share desires in the United States
vs. in Europe.