Dropping COE prices make small, cheap cars much more accessible

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Singapore -

It’s amazing what a few weeks can do. Since January, Singapore has gone from a market that was hostile to small, practical runabouts to one where owning a small car isn’t total financial insanity.

And it’s all down to one thing: Certificate of Entitlement (COE) prices. Burgeoning car COE quotas have mean plummeting COE values. Since the beginning of this year, COE price for a ‘mainstream’ Category A (for cars 1.6-litres/less than 130bhp) cert has dropped $8,811 dollars. In February’s most recent round of bidding, it ended up at $57,199 - a landmark, since that’s a price we haven’t seen for almost three years, or April 2012.

Another example of just how far COE prices have dropped are the kinds of cars that have appeared on the market, as well as the price drops for some of the smaller models.

Kia’s Rio compact hatchback was launched globally almost four years ago, but it will finally make its Singaporean debut here in May, with a very un-threatening price tag of $94,000 with COE.

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In the meantime, we see prices of existing machines drop into much more comfortable territory as well. Hyundai’s excellent Accent which was one of the year’s first sub-$100k cars (by a dollar no less) is now $94,999 with COE, while its sister-competitor, the Kia Forte K3, is $93,000 with COE.

Even more slightly more expensive machines have taken a turn towards affordability, with the Ford Fiesta 1.0 retailing at nearly $120k when we first tested it earlier this year, now going for $97,999 with COE in its cheapest form.

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