Unfortunately not everyone thinks like you. Majority of the market will care less and buy the cheaper one and then opt to complain about it instead.

Trust me, without fail every time.

I don't mind bare bone spec'ed cars from existing. There might be people who wants the RM24k cheap Axia for personal reasons.

But, the point to make is to have options. I am not asking to have how the US or UK have spec list on their cars which you can tick and personalise to your own fancy. But, a little more variety would be good. Like Mazda 3 for example has 2 trim levels for sedan but only 1 variation for hatchback. What makes the hatchback justified to only have 1 spec available?

Malaysia car buying is you like you buy, you tak suka you keluar.

Production line wise, of course it is the case that where they have a more streamlined processing and less trouble trying to keep tabs of what they need to build. They only need to build cars by batches and that keeps their parts inventory easy to manage especially using the JIT way of stocking inventory needed.

After sales and maintenance wise, i doubt so because whatever that can be introduced are not major components that are critical to the car. Not like they are offering 50 different stereo sets with 50 different speaker configurations. So, it should not be too much of a hassle to after sales and service with the exception of keeping parts available all the time.

The costs part is a known fact all along. As cost cutting procedures this measures were taken. We are not given options to choose and we are not given any freedom in how to get our cars, fact in reality. But since it was on the topic of voting with wallet, then why not make our cars option open. I think that is better, there might be people who want to buy a car sans stereo. There might be someone who wants to buy a car with steel rims. You never know right? Make it only 1 base model and then you spec from there from the basic stereo to car seats to whether you need a heater and all the way up to the trim levels.

Crazy talk anyways.

I only tried before W212 Merc both a CKD and CBU back to back before. But even so it was like an E200 CKD vs an E250 CBU i think and there were differences just by the car going through the bumps.

So, my general presumption is that there will be differences either through differences in manufacturing or the quality of components used through localisation.

The problem with the wait and estimate waiting time is not really due to the JIT or whatever. The JIT happens regardless because for one they don't want to stockpile so many parts which is burden on their cashflow. They also do not want to get so much space just to stock up the parts warehouse if it was not for immediate use.

Then here comes the kicker because chassis needs to be painted and as the cars nowadays goes through baths instead of just normal spray process. They do the production run in batches and this could mean batches of a model or an entire batch of multiple models one run at a time in one single colour. Then they need to do this by gauging the amount of orders countrywide which means locked down sales or orders before they decide to do which run.

So, the wait is inevitably there because if there is no orders for a particular colour it will result in a longer wait before they do a run of the colour.

Whether the dealer want to burden their own cashflow by stocking up weird colours of any particular model or trim level or any combination of any kind in their backyard is totally their own issue.

If you happen to chance on one which has something you want in immediate stock, then you are lucky la.

The CBU ride is more muted over rough roads and bumps. The CKD unit was a little more crashy than expected from a Merc.

But then as i mentioned. Not sure if being a E200 vs E250 makes any difference. The E250 does have a larger rim if i am not wrong meaning it should be less cushioned than the E200.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Sexy is a very subjective thing