Used Cars

23 January, 2007 Tuesday

Despite the abundance of public transportation in Sydney, we soon dashed all hopes of being able to get by without a car, since Kevin will frequently be required to visit client worksites. Besides, it is very difficult to scavenge roadside rubbish piles on the bus.

In an attempt to be budget minded, we set an arbitrary price cap of A$3,000. Cruising the myriad of used car lots along Parramatta Road, we quickly became discouraged – not only by the ravishing heat which tuned every car into a stale and distasteful sauna, but also by the universally sleazy car salesmen who introduced themselves by asking how much we wanted to spend, although the more creative among them would assume we were Canadian, then apologize and ask why we weren’t at the Country Music Festival up the coast. “Uh, cuz we don’t have a car? And Country music sucks.” But seriously, how much are you looking to spend?

We believed we might get a better deal from a private-party seller, but then we realized the difficulty faced by not having full access to our funds (I’m still too frustrated to write about Australian banking practices). So we raised our price, and resigned ourselves to the fact that we would need to obtain financing. But lo, our stellar American credit is worthless here. Ai, ai, ai.

Finally, we decided we would have to eat the extra fees and put a car on our MasterCard. Figuring that a licensed dealer in a more swank part of town (Parramatta Road is a bit daggy) would have a reputation to uphold and would therefore have a nicer inventory of used cars, I paid a visit to the Toyota dealer in Chatswood. Sure enough, the first question, in an impeccable Australian accent out of the distinctly Pacific Islander salesman’s mouth was “How much do you want to spend?” But, when I declined to answer and instead went into a rant about the inherently antagonistic relationship between buyer and seller, Peter backed down and gave me the space I needed to assess his inventory. Good on ya, Peter.

And so, we are now the satisfied owners of a 1991 Camry with a mere 110,000 km (68,000 miles) previously owned (of course) by an 84 year-old man. I swear, every used car on his lot was owned by an old man who kept it garaged and only drove it to his weekly lawn bowling matches. Still, it is a decent enough car, very clean with complete service records. We’re going to pimp it out in zebra-skin and dingle-balls. (If anyone can send us a bobble-head Virgin Mary, it would be greatly appreciated.) And all for the low, low price of A$5,500 (US$4,321 as of the time of writing), negotiated down from A$6,990.

Overall, not too bad. It has a boot big enough for plenty of discarded furniture and is spacious enough for visitors and heaps of luggage filled with chile verde burritos…hint, hint.

Note: Another way in which Australia is quite progressive is the fact that liability insurance (to the tune of $20 million dollars) is attached to the registration, transferable upon resale, thus eliminating one more pain in the ass shopping experience.