Every now and then, we are taken aback by how ridiculously high car prices are in Singapore. But it’s not entirely BMW’s fault. That’s just how the cookie crumbles in the island country and city-state in Southeast Asia due to extremely high taxes. As I explained in an article last November about the M5 Sedan costing the equivalent of $556,000, buying a car there is a massively costly endeavor.
The Certificate of Entitlement (COE) is a permit one must purchase by winning a bid to earn the legal right to drive the car for 10 years. Its value changes depending on demand, so it can sharply increase a car’s price tag. Customers must also pay an Additional Registration Fee (ARF), which is directly related to the vehicle’s Open Market Value (OMV). Because BMWs are already expensive from the get-go, that extra fee makes things even worse.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Singapore applies a Goods and Services Tax (GST) on imported vehicles. Then there’s the Vehicular Emissions Scheme (VES), which imposes higher fees on higher-polluting vehicles. That’s how you end up with a wagon costing 775,888 Singapore dollars, or about $598,711 at current exchange rates.
It’s nearly six times more expensive than in the United States, where you can drive one for “just” $125,275, assuming you’re not ticking any boxes on the options list. Speaking of which, the M5 Touring comes standard in Singapore with M Compound brakes, so the carbon-ceramic setup costs extra. BMW doesn’t mention colors, but we imagine customers must fork out more for special hues from the Individual catalog.
But despite the exorbitant price tag, BMW must’ve crunched the numbers and concluded it’s still worth launching the M5 Touring in Singapore. The M lineup is surprisingly diverse there, including just about everything from the M135i to the XM. Even the smaller-brother M3 Touring is available, having launched in early 2023 for 560,888 Singapore dollars. That’s $433,000 in today’s money.