Right now, I’m doing a business & fun travel, aka Workation. I choose Taipei because of relatively low cost of living, safety and because I have many customers from Taiwan.
Even though this was not supposed to happen, I decided to organize a small Roadster meeting!
There was not so many people who showed up (heavy rain, last minute event), but I am glad that the biggest Mazda dealership in South East Asia decided to let us use their location. Check the photos, it’s worth it.
The Meet
Meetings in Taiwan are much different than the ones in America. Most people don’t just come to hang out and show their cars, they prefer to do activities (driving, dinners, etc.). So, many people didn’t show up because it was mostly a picture session that I was hosting (note to myself : next time, do an activity).
This is the first car that showed up. It was a ND with Rays 57Transcend 17×8.5 +40 Wheels. I loved the look of the color combo!
Then, we started posing. Nice way to show the color palette of the ND!
This was Andy’s car. One of the only Manual Transmission ND in Taiwan (read below for the reason). He’s also rocking the RK Design Rear Spoiler!
There were also 2 people who showed but it wasn’t for the meeting, just for maintenance… haha!
A beautiful white ND with Zeromotive Muffler Cutters:
And this VERY rare piece. It’s a ND “Gran Turismo” Edition. To get this very car, you need to order Gran Turismo (collector’s edition) and the car comes as a bonus. It’s probably the most expensive Gran Turismo Game EVER.
And a few more showed up!
Lastly, a few more people showed and this ND owner wanted a picture for the blog, so here we go:
Here are some pictures of where we hosted the event, it’s worth showing it off:
The reception looks like the one from a high end hotel :
As you can see, it’s just HUGE. All made of beautiful black marble as well as wood. It’s 2 stories high.
The showroom is SUPER neat.
They have a nice collection of old school Mazda magazines :
They even have a Skyactiv Engine on display
So, why is the Mazda dealership SO big and SO beautiful, you may ask?
Let’s do basic economics here.
A loft in downtown Taipei can cost you ~$500 USD per month (which is really low, in my opinion).
Cars are taxed HEAVILY. We’re talking 60% + tax.
A ND Miata (Soft Top) in Taipei cost you a small NT$1,320,000 ; that’s about USD$45,000
The RF cost NT$1,500,000 so about USD$51,000
Fun fact, ALL Mazda cars here have the Automatic Transmission (AT). People with Manual Transmission (MT) vehicles MT actually need to import their cars from overseas (the manual ones I saw came from Germany).
I still didn’t answer the question, though. Let’s just put it this way. Since the price of the vehicle is up to par with what a BMW or Mercedes-Benz would cost in USA, the dealership reflects the high price of the price people will pay for a car.
Here’s the waiting area, so you can work or just relax while your car is serviced:
You can see your car being worked on, if you don’t trust the mechanics:
When I did the photo shoot, they were doing a demo of camping gear for the new CX-5. I learned that you can actually camp on your car… neat.
They even offer you free coffee, and it’s not coming from a K-Cup machine!
It’s fair to say that this dealership is nicer than any of those I ever visited during my many times in Japan. I hope you enjoyed this read and understood a bit more about the scene in Taiwan! By the way, it was not a ND-only meeting. It just happens that there never were NA in Taiwan, they sold NB for a few years and it was not popular enough. They skipped the NC and when the ND was revealed, they started selling it back again!
