COE Categorisation - is something wrong, LTA?

VW Passat with its 1390cc engine and 122bhp goes into Cat A

in the current LTA COE categorisation system. 

(Image credits to its owner)

CarBuyer Singapore ran this article on Sept 2 "How to 'fool' the LTA" on getting premium cars like Merc and BMW into mainstream 'Cat A' category.

Read:
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/fool-lta-143020130.html

Previously, LTA COE system only factor of consideration is the engine cc. Vehicle at and below 1600cc will fall under Category A while cars more than 1600cc will fall under Category B. Simple as that.

However,  due to improvement in technologies, large cars like VW Passat, Audi A4 all introduced smaller cc engine but with larger power output. Hence more cars can get into Cat A (Cat A price is usually lower) and benefit from the lower COE. LTA reacted to this and recently added an additional criteria - a car has to be equal or less than 1600cc AND equal or less than 130bhp in order to be classified under Cat A.

Yet, within the article car manufacturer Merc and BMW managed to 'fool' LTA by introducing lower cc lower output cars so that their cars are able to fit Cat A criteria once again. And we are taking about cars like Merc C-class and Volkswagen Passat, some are cars that goes head to head with Toyota Camry, a true 2.0litre and above sedan.

A large triggering factor to this trend will be that since manufacturer charge premium prices for their cars, they have the additional profits for the freeplay which could mean changing another engine to developing entirely a new model to suit the criteria, any criteria that LTA sets.

To make Cat A truly 'mainstream' and to have a fairer, LTA should go right into the heart of the question and categorise using the PRICE of the car. Price before COE or even OMV should be used to categories COE (and IMO, road tax as well). If a manufacturer wants to get into Cat A, it will have to drop its price to a certain level which due to the cost of premium cars, they are not likely nor have the motivation to do so unless COE goes sky high for Cat B and rock bottom for Cat A.