I couldn't agree more.  The current state of the dollar is causing all kinds
of problems for any of us who deal with Europe.  And you can ignore any of
the "strong dollar" lip service that the Bush administration spouts weekly,
they aren't going to do anything about the dollar's fall.  We've been
brainstorming and consulting with our German vendors about USA products to
import to Germany.  Unfortunately, we have very little that they want...

Cheers,

Jeff
www.vanagonparts.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com]On Behalf
Of The Bus Depot
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 7:05 PM
To: vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com
Subject: Vanagon Parts Prices Going Up Everywhere

This has been a recent thread on the Type2 list.  I thought I'd post the
"condensed version" of it here because it applies equally to Vanagon parts.
See below.

- Ron Salmon
  The Bus Depot, Inc.
  www.busdepot.com
  (215)  234-VWVW

_____________________________________________
Toll-Free for Orders by PART # :  1-866-BUS-DEPOT

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Hineline
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 9:29 AM
To: Type 2 List
Subject: [T2] Bus parts and exchange rates

I took it upon myself to resend the following, because many listees are
doubtless deleting messages with the WR1 subject heading:

Ron from Bus Depot wrote:

"The fall of the dollar also has a lot to do with it. Everything
imported is skyrocketing in price because the dollar is dropping to new
lows every day. Most indications are that this will only get worse over
the near future. If you need any imported parts (and most VW parts are,
of course, imported), I _strongly_ advise you to stock up now, because
huge price increases, industry wide, are almost a certainty. This is
not a come-on but an honest assessment of the current market.
Everything I'm reordering is costing me 10-25% more because of the
dollar's fall, and every other importer's seeing the same thing. Prices
on many parts are going to skyrocket."

And Richard Atwell concurred:

"This is good advice. I deal with CDN currency conversions all the time
and it really hurts right now. Right after the election it just went
zoom."

Mark Hineline