Best chise of car for a country like the DR

[heldengebroed]

Imagine you have to choose a car.
1 a brand new pickup with all mod coms and electronica
2 for 8 to 10 times les money an old pick up with no electronics but for which you can fiend a mechanic on every streetcorner that can repair it if broken

Which would be your choice?

Greetings


Johan

[dv8]

neither. best choice is a pick-up few years old, mitsubishi or toyota. easy to fix, easy to sell.
remember there is a tax to be paid on purchase of brand new cars. unless you are rich - take used car...

[CFA123]

Honest? Something in the middle, still reliable but having depreciated a lot in value.

[hammerdown]

buy a toyota, or mits....every mechanic knows how to repair them, if you buy a chevy, like i did, then the only place to get them repaired is in santiago, or santo domingo.....i had a mechanic take 9hrs to replace an alternator belt on my chevy...and after he said thats the first time he ever worked on a chevy....go with toyota or mits

[ffritz]

Buy an SUV - that way your shopping won't get wet when it rains

[El Viejo]

Do you plan on getting full coverage insurance ( collision, theft etc ). The two insurance companies I've dealt with here charge 6% of the value of the vehicle for this coverage. Therefore the older the vehicle, the lower the insurance.

[heldengebroed]

No

Just wondering after a conversation with a friend here in Belgium. He has a brand new Renault and is a mechanic he works all day with truck engines. Like any good car owner he checked the oil levels and they were down a little so he desided to put some oil in his car. Bigg mistake His car wouldn't start afterwards. It had to be done by renault at a huge price. Made me wondering how the situation in the DR is.

Greetings

Johan

[ffritz]

We looked at what everyone else was driving. It was Toyota, Mitsubishi, Honda, Nissan. We bought a 2000 Montero Sport figuring that there's thousands around so parts & repairs can be easily found/done. As Hammerdown said if you have a rare car the repairs are very difficult to do - not only costly but also in terms of the time involved waiting for parts.

[Chirimoya]

My specs:

Not low-slung (potholes, floods, sleeping policemen) which rules out a whole load of cars.
Not too small and vulnerable to being crunched in city traffic like the one I have at the moment.
Fuel efficient.
Manual.
Inconspicuous - don't want to be a more of a target for thieves.

Mr C says that the downside of the popular models like Toyota and Mitsubishi are that they are in great demand from thieves too, for their spare parts.

Generally, I like European cars but I found that spare parts are relatively expensive. Also, my little Italian job is not as fuel-efficient as one would expect.

A smallish, diesel, stick shift SUV several years old in good condition might be the answer.

My first car here (first car ever) in 1999, was a 1987 Isuzu Trooper and it was excellent in most ways - too big though. Mr C has a 2001 Land Rover Defender which is incredibly fuel efficient, but also ridiculously huge.

[The Virginian]

toyota,toyota,toyota,toyota make it 4 wheel drive and something that sits up. So shoot for a truck or SUV, but make it a toyota,toyota,toyota.