Thought I would test out the claim that car prices in Australia are the highest in the world. I recently took delivery of a manual GTI with metallic paint and DAP and paid a tad over $45K driveaway. I priced up the virtually identical car on the UK VW site and this came in at £33345 drive away, which at current exchange rates is about $60K!!! In the Republic of Ireland, where I know there are pretty hefty taxes on vehicles especially petrol engined ones, the same car came in at €46K or about $75K!!!!