The Worst Places in the World to Buy a Car

If you’re a car enthusiast, consider the countries mentioned in this episode as a list of places that you don’t ever want to live. Listen in as the CarStuff guys talk about some of the worst (and most expensive) places in the world to buy a car.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
Car Stuff from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hi, welcome
to Car Stuff. I'm Scott, I'm Ben. We are joined
as always with our super producer Tyler Playing. And I've
got to tell you, Scott, I don't say it often enough.

(00:25):
Today's episode has really made me appreciate living in Atlanta. Right. Yeah. Now,
I know that our traffic is a continuing shaggy dog
story with no real punchline, and it's horrible often, but
things could be much much worse. It could be a

(00:46):
lot worse. And it depends on where you live. I mean,
of course, not just in the United States. We're talking
about all over the world. There's some great places doing cars.
There's some bad places doing cars, and it's some awful
places doing cars, some places where it's almost impossible doing
a car, but somehow people do. I mean, you'll you'll
you'll find photographs of some of these cities that we're
gonna talk about today, some of these some of these
countries that we're talking about today, and you'll look at

(01:08):
the crowded city streets, and after we describe to you
what's going on there, you'll wonder how anybody manages to
get around town in their own personal transportation. Right, So
here's a peek behind the curtain. Friends and neighbors, ladies
and gentlemen. Typically, when Scott and I are recording an episode,
as you know if you're a longtime listener, we rarely

(01:30):
get to everything we want to talk about. And typically
after we record, we hang out and shoot the breeze
for a while because we're still into this stuff that
we were talking about. And one one day Scott and
I were hanging out around the office as you do,
and we we started thinking about the what what are

(01:53):
they called superlatives? Yeah, we started thinking about the best
places to own a car and how would you go
about measuring at right? And we thought about the you know,
the opposite, what would the worst places to own a
car be? And again, how would you measure it? And oh, man,
did we find a bull of spaghetti and stats here?

(02:13):
Because we're looking at this today, but we're pulling from
a number of different sources, and we're using a number
of different databases because it turns out that best and
worst in many ways are kind of in the eye
of the beholder or in the eye of the metric right,
is Are we gonna say that a country with the

(02:36):
most expensive gas is the worst place to buy a car,
even though it probably has very well maintained roads. Are
we going to say the place with the highest number
of fatalities per capita per year is the worst place
to drive a car, but the gas is cheap, you
know what I mean? Yeah, Yeah, There's a lot of
factors that go into uh nominating the best and worst places. Now,

(02:58):
these are just kind of a grouping of some opinions,
I guess. And and here's why, Like you know, a
lot of people from around the world have written and
or in fact, we're gonna follow one article. You know,
there's several places we're going going to for this information here,
but one of the things that we're gonna talk about
is the most expensive places to buy a car. We're
gonna talk about the worst cities doing a car. And

(03:18):
why we're gonna talk about you know, you've already kind
of laid this out, I guess, you know, like with
all the different reasons it can be, um, you know,
whether it's maintenance costs, whether it's uh, you know, just
awful government regulations that are in that in that part
of the world. Could be taxes, it could be parts availability,
it could be you know, do you have access to
anybody that can service your vehicle? You know, maintenance. Um,

(03:39):
we've got so many things. Oh, theft is gonna come
into this, you know, the income of the country. And
there's gonna be a lot of different factors that go
into this. But one of the one of the lists
we're gonna look at here is the ten most expensive
places to buy a car. And that was one that
was written in uh in Gelotnic I think it was right.
And uh you know this is just people from those
countries writing in and saying, here's why my country is

(04:00):
the worst, or why this country that I visited was
the worst. And so you'll find you know, some anecdotal
stuff like that along the way too, and we'll throw
that in a little bit. But some of this comes
right down to, as I said, you know, the this
this bigger um computation I guess of of of course,
you know, taxes and insurance and just outright M S

(04:21):
r p s that are higher in certain regions than others. Um,
just lots of different factors that make one city or
one country or one region or whatever it is However,
we break this apart here because we got a lot
to ways to look at it, um one way that
makes it either the best or the worst in that
grouping of categories. If that makes sense. I know I'm
way over explaining this. Probably it totally makes sense. And

(04:42):
the only thing that I would add here is the
most important part of the show, which is your job. Folks,
as you're listening, we want to hear your stories. Have
you ever had the misfortune to attempt to buy a
car in Singapore? Have you? Have you ever where is
the worst place you ever had to drive? Uh? You know,

(05:04):
we want to know your experience, and we also want
to hear your reactions because you're going to find some
surprising stuff. Without further Ado Scott, where do you think
we should begin? Oh my gosh, you want to start
with the most expensive places? Do it that way? Yeah? Yeah,
all right, So let's talk about the most expensive places
to buy a car? And this is the one again
from Gelapnic if you want to follow along with this.

(05:25):
It's a couple of years old actually, but I like
the comments in it. It's pretty funny. And we're gonna
move on to you know, a list that covers the
most Uh well, I guess the worst cities and the
best cities as well, and how they came up with
those numbers and and facts and figures. But um, I
like the way this one was kind of laid out
is because for every one of them, for every one
of these places that we're talking about the most expensive places,

(05:45):
they try to take something that is kind of identifiable
to most Americans here as a as a like a
base vehicle to go buy, right, So they took the
this is done in by the way sion f RS
and the base price of a sign f f R
S was around twenty five thousand, six d dollars in

(06:07):
the United States, and that was again a couple of years,
three or four years ago. I don't know exactly what
the price is now, but it doesn't matter because we're
still talking about all of this happening in right, and
where they didn't have that one available because there are
some countries where you can't get that. So they took
a Toyota Prius from two thousand twelve I think it was,
and the base price for that one is right around
twenty four thousand dollars back in twelve. So again twenty

(06:30):
four thousand for the Prius six for the f r S.
And to keep those numbers in mind as we go
through this this list, that will be your real eye
opening moment when we tell you how much of that
costs in each of these these places we're going to
talk about. So the first one on the list Cuba, right,
this might surprise people. So what is the price of
a new PSI on f R S? Their response L

(06:54):
O L Yeah, good luck getting one is what that means, right,
I mean seriously they now we do know that you
know this, Uh, the market's kind of opened up, right,
it's been liberated, as they say right back that like
what is it in two thousand eleven, I think is
when it was open again. And we had talked about
several times. The clever owners, they're the clever car owners.

(07:15):
How they have taken cars from the nineteen fifties that
were imported there in there, you know, brought in from
the United States in the nineteen fifties. They're still using
them as daily drivers because they haven't had anything newer
to to choose from. Really, you know, there were sanctions
against them, we were there's no trade happening between the
two countries, the United States and Cuba. Now they were

(07:35):
getting cars from other places, but you gotta remember this
as a communist run nation, and prices are jacked way
up and incomes are way low, and corruption was also
super high, similar to what we saw in our earlier examination.
I think we called it cars of the iron curtain,
cars behind the iron curtains, something like that. Yeah, what

(07:56):
we found is that due to corruption and due to
some corner cutting and manufacturing standards, a lot of those
Eastern European vehicles in that market were either unreliable or
impossible to get unless one was connected to the ruling party. Yeah,

(08:18):
you were put on a waiting list that was years long.
I mean you might you might have to wait seven
or eight years to get a you know, just a
run of the mill um whatever, a lot of or
something like that, because the deputy minister of so and
so's son or cousin or wife would be consistently jumping
ahead of you in line, always, always, and so you
know that seven year list that you're on might even

(08:38):
be lengthened at some point. You're not you're not likely
going to get it sooner than that. So, yeah, it's
it's pretty difficult to imagine driving something brand new in
Cuba that, you know, with the prices being what they
are now. Again, this is one where they don't actually
have the cost of it because it's just not available
there even now, so we're talking six years later. Um,
and they use if they do, In fact, they do
use a lot of For an example, so another communist vehicle,

(09:02):
of course, an import but in nineteen seventies Lata is
about twelve thousand U S. Dollars in Cuba right now,
twelve thousand. Take a look at a take a look
at the nineteen seventies Lata and tell me if you
think that's worth twelve thousand U S. Dollars And ask
yourself about the cost of maintenance. Because we've said it before,
we'll say it again. Uh, Cuban mechanics are the real deal. Yeah,

(09:24):
these folks are my divers made flesh absolutely Yeah. So
you know, of course you're looking for reliability in a car.
The good thing is that they do have. Uh. You know,
these these incredible mechanics that are you know, just ingenious.
They can they can make parts out of wood that
they need, you know, they do all kinds of crazy
things to keep these cars on the road, and we've
discussed that at length, you know, with cars. I think

(09:45):
we did a Cuban Cars episode maybe or something like
that too, And just the the they're so clever with
the way that they can replace and keep these things
on the road. It's just just amazing. Then keep them
looking good still, um, next one on the list does
probably no surprise. Number nine the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea conventionally known as North Korea. Now again, okay, we're

(10:08):
starting out kind of rough here, but the price of
a new Scion FRS. You can't get one again, you
just can't do it. You can't put a financial price
on it. Literally, it depends upon your standing. Uh you're
standing in the hierarchy and the inner circle hierarchy of
pieong Gang. It ultimately boils down to whether the administration

(10:32):
or should I say the regime cares for you. Kim
jongon has to approve it or as Cadre has to
approve it. And we saw this great right up here
that essentially says most people cannot actually buy a car.
The car market is pretty much subject to government whims.
So good luck with fuel rationing and something a lot

(10:55):
of a lot of folks in other countries don't have
to worry about, which would be travel permits. Yeah, you
have to worry about some some additional things aside from
just routine maintenance, keeping the gas tank filled, that type
of thing, right now, ga gas tank field. I mean,
that's a huge deal with gas gas rationing happening. But
you know, essentially what we're saying is the cars are
kind of for the elite. Now there are they do

(11:16):
have other cars, but they're not something that you necessarily
would want to drive right right, There are some Soviet
era I guess these are Soviet descended, I guess would
be a better word, because they're making clones of Soviet cars.
So I like the picture in this, I mean, this
is one's kind of dressed up like a Mercedes and
this it's obviously it's not not not definitely not, but

(11:40):
it's like a clone of the gas fifty one that
you can, you know, like a pre war Soviet car.
I guess you know something. I think it's a light truck. Actually, yeah,
it's uh, it's modeled off Yeah, the gas fifty ones
a light truck. Uh. The name for this would be
Mercedes is the Choeing Gang four point one zero. Uh.

(12:02):
There's there's another thing. I can't remember if we talked
about this on air, Scott. Uh, there's another really interesting
automotive phenomenon in North Korea. We must have, we must
have I think we have yea yeah, And that is
using wood as a source of fuel for vehicles instead
of gasoline. So these are these wood fired vehicles. Yeah, uh,

(12:24):
not not all of them, but but there's a wood
gas conversion that happens there. Like the trucks at least
there are a lot a lot of the heavier trucks
are would Gasskay. So it's a crazy world over there
in North Korea, isn't it. I Mean, there's some really
interesting things happening because and I don't know if I
should believe this or not, but I kind of do
based on what I do know about the current leader there.

(12:46):
All Right, So here's the here's the story that someone
had written in here. This is spooky. Yeah, Now, so
tell me if you think this is true. But right this,
because we said, everything kind of relies on these government whims. Right,
whether you're allowed to drive with you're not allowed to drive,
what you can drive et cetera. So one day, one day,
Kim Kim jong eel was so irritated by having to
to wait behind a Japanese car, and they said, what

(13:09):
must have been the only traffic jam ever in North Korea? Right,
I mean, I guess it was a little different time
a few even a few years back, but this is
Kim Jong il and um, yeah, he noticed that the
car in front of him was a Japanese import car,
and the he immediately after that ordered that all Japanese
cars were to be confiscated and just removed from the country.

(13:29):
Do you believe that? So, you know, you don't know
if that's really true or not. I mean, it's one
of those things that will never probably really find out
until maybe what they collapse and everybody gets in there
to kind of look at what's really happening or what
has happened. Um, you know, people aren't afraid to talk anymore.
It's just a it's a really it's a it's an interesting,
scary place. And I really appreciate you saying this, Scott,
because that's one thing that I think escapes a lot

(13:51):
of us, especially in the Western world. Many of the
stories told about North Korea, many of them are propaganda
coming from South Korea or in some cases coming from
the West. Now, I am not in any way saying

(14:12):
that it is not a horrific place, because all the evidence,
including satellite imagery, conclusively proves that it is. That is
no longer an opinion, that is an inarguable fact. However,
we do have to use critical thinking when we hear
some of the stuff. And Scott and I can assure
you that, yeah, you don't want to buy a car there.

(14:33):
You can't buy a car there. If you do, it's
probably a state or military function of some sort. You're
probably an official. It's likely something you don't even want.
I mean it would be a luxury for somebody to
have one there. And yeah, and you are, you are
automatically in a very dangerous position. I would take a bicycle. Yeah. Well,

(14:54):
everything could be taken away from you, right, I mean
it just in a moment's notice. It can be confiscated,
taken away. All right, let's move Let's move on to
something a little bit brighter, but but also equally bad
for car owners, right, Yes, number eight Saint Kitts and Nevis. Okay, now,
this is a two island sovereign state that's in the
West Indies, in the in the Caribbean area, and so
it's just if you want to think of it this way,

(15:15):
on the on the globe, it's it's just south and
east of Puerto Rico, right, So that's where we're talking
about really tiny little island nation or nation islands nation.
Maybe it's two islands. And the price of a new
sign frs. If you were to get one there, well,
you can't get one there right now. That's that's one
of the problems. Okay, so that's three in a row. Right,
they get signed, but they can get they do have

(15:36):
a two thousand twelve priests get this. The price one
hundred and seventy one thousand, four hundred and five dollars
and that was in two thousand thirteen for a two
thousand twelve model, And that is almost entirely due to
import taxes. Isn't that insane? So this is like a
you know, it's like a Caribbean paradise, right, I mean,

(15:56):
it's a beautiful place, but the thing is like, yeah,
port taxes and uh, just I think God, who knows
exactly what's going on there? And I know that when
we went to I've been to the South Pacific and
it was on this I was on Bora, Bora, and
to get a car or truck or boat or anything there,

(16:19):
I mean, it was like a six or eight month process.
And I talked. I talked to a guy that owned
a resort there and he was he had a boat,
and I know I mentioned this boat. He had a
speed boat, and he said it took him like eight
months or twelve months or something to get it there.
I can't remember exactly the exact date, but it was
a it was a stage prop that was used in
David Copperfield show in Las Vegas. And so he has
this boat there at the end of the dock. It's

(16:40):
got a cracked engine block. And he said, there's no
way I paid. You know, you told me what he
paid for it, and it was like it was a
crazy amount of it wasn't that expensive to buy it.
The crazy amount was to have it ship because it
had to be created up in ship. Even though he's
on an island. They can't just drive it. You can't,
you know, like drive the boat to him to create it,
put it on another ship and then and then uncreated.
It's setera has to go through all the customs and

(17:01):
everything that it has to do. I mean, it's months
months worth of process. Expensive, insanely expensive. And that applies
across the board. Because, if I remember correctly, you told
me that you were in contact with this guy via
email before you left the States and he asked you
for a big favor. Yeah, he did. This is this

(17:22):
is how crazy, This is how hard it is to
get anything to to an island like that. It's kind
of isolated, kind of out of the way. He needed
a chord for I think it was a MacBook or
something like that, right, a cable, just a simple cable
that you can pick up at any Apple store. I
don't remember what it was exactly, but it was like
it's like a hundred dollars or something, you're right, And
he said, can you please just bring me this. This
is some guy I've never met and he's emailing me,

(17:44):
you know, two weeks ahead of my trip, and I'll
give you the cash. Yeah, he says, I'll give you
the cash when you get here. It's no problem. But
I'm thinking, like, oh, this is kind of weird. I
don't know, you know, I was I was thinking it
was a strange setup right from the beginning, like it
was gonna scam me in some way. But you know,
then again, I'm going to stay at this guy's place.
So I went ahead and did it and everything worked
out fine. But then that's when I got the story
of how long it takes to get everything. And he said,
this cable would have cost me, you know, six times

(18:05):
would it cost you, and it would have taken me,
you know, three or four months to get it minimum. Yeah,
it's just it's insane when you think about things like that.
So the same kids and Nevis, uh, you know, being
on this list, I guess and kind of well, kind
of high up, I guess at number eight. Um, it
doesn't really surprise me. You know that that's really difficult.
It's it's tough to get a new car to uh,

(18:27):
you know, an island nation like that. I mean, it's
really difficult. Getting a used one there would be even
even tough. But and in addition to the difficulty, one
thing that's very important to note is that they they
being the government of this country, have to take concrete
steps to artificially limit the number of vehicles on the

(18:49):
island because they're not making any more new Land, sat
kids and Nevis. Now, I don't want to overcrowd it
right right, and that could happen very very easily because
this is this place has a very strong tourist industry.
It's probably a great place where a lot of people retire,
so they're fairly well to do at that point. Yeah,

(19:11):
we're we're both chuckling because my my Tennessee accident came
out when I tried to say, well to do for
a second, so I'd use the magic of editing to
take it back. And it happens. You should leave that
in when it happens. That's that's that's charming. Well uh
all all applause due to h Tyler, clang, ladies and gentlemen.
Thanks for saving the show, buddy. So what's next, guy? Oh,

(19:34):
next on the list, let's see it would be oh,
this is kind of surprise the United Kingdom. So in
the United Kingdom, a price of a new science f
R S it's going to ring in around thirty nine thousand,
thirty one. Okay, that's not that's not too much over
what we're talking about, right, But the thing is, okay,

(19:55):
I use cars in the United Kingdom are cheap. New
cars are not necessar really cheap, so it's still a
little bit more than we pay here in the United
States for the same vehicle, right, but use cars are
cheap because their right hand drive, and then they can't
be sold or used practically anywhere else in Europe. Uh.
But that's not the truth for new cars when it
comes to like insurance, that they completely wipe you out,

(20:16):
insurances where you pay a ton of money for this.
So um, it's not necessarily that the new cars are
marked up. It's just that the new car insurance rates
are so high that you're practically unable to to afford it. Now,
even that's even true with use cars to some extent,
And there's an example of that here. There's a writer
that wrote into Gelopnic again and gave an example because

(20:37):
it's somebody from the UK and says, um, now I'll
just read it. I'm currently struggling to buy a second
hand us their second hand car. In the UK, the
cars themselves are dirt cheap, but the insurance for a
twenty eight year old male who has only been in
the country for two years is just terrifyingly expensive to
ensure an elderly two point one. I'm guessing that's a
They don't say here, but I'm guessing that must be

(20:58):
an L for a male one six to be Um,
that's just sedan really, it's just simple, simple vehicles. I
think maybe coop to anyways, but it's a smaller car. Um,
he says. If I don't if I don't lie on
the insurance to the insurance company, it's gonna cost me
between four four thousand, five hundred and nine thousand euros.
And I've done the translation for that. You know, like

(21:18):
what that amounts to. That's about five thousand, three U
S dollars to anywhere about ten thousand, six hundred U
S dollars just to ensure the car for a year. Yeah,
insurances mess, It's unbelievable. So in the car itself, if
you're again like, well this is some kind of fancy
al for a mail, right, it's not. The car itself
would be worth about one thousand euros. So that's only

(21:39):
about if U S. Dollars that's about maybe a little
bit less. So we're not talking about anything alter fancy.
So when you see, you know, somebody rolling up in
a brand new Lamborghini in the United Kingdom. You know,
you have any idea what they're paying for insurance for
that vehicle. That's that's where the money is coming from.
I mean, I know it's expensive to buy something like that,
but there's a lot of supercars. There's a lot of

(21:59):
really nice, um, you know, luxury cars that are there.
We see we see video of of cars in London
all the time, you know, just you know, random YouTube
videos or wherever I have different blogs and things that
I go to. There's some really really nice cars that
are rolling around London. Uh yeah, I mean I guess
all over UK early but um beautiful, beautiful cars and

(22:20):
they're paying through the nose for the insurance on those vehicles,
not just not just the new car price. And so
London is a is a financial center of the world,
there's no no bones about that. But along with that
comes tremendous living expenses and automobiles are no way immune.
Remember it seems like every time we read about a

(22:42):
really nice supercar in London, or every time we read
about wasn't there that one guy who bought parking deck
the every every single time I might be exaggerating, let
me just say not not at ten times in our experience,
it seems that the people who own these cars and

(23:05):
ultimately flit the bill for them, including insurance, parking, maintenance,
all that slow jazz there, they're from a foreign country
where they are massively wealthy, and they would just rather
hang out in London. Yeah, so it's a it's the
cost to play there. I guess it feels like the
average Londoner has no chance and having a really nice car.

(23:28):
And it's not just London either, I mean we're talking
about the entire United Kingdom. Sure, I don't know if
this this reader is from London, you know, in particular,
but somewhere in the United Kingdom, and so I mean
all over that region. It's it's difficult to to own,
really difficult in a new car. It's even most still
even tough to own a used car, just because of
the insurance mainly. But you know then they've also got

(23:48):
the fuel. They've got high fuel costs there too. I
think you know, the price per leader is still expensive.
I don't have today's numbers or anything on me right now,
but it's got to be up there. It's it always is.
It's always very high there. So, um, that's a tough place.
To in a car. Speaking of tough places to own
a car, how about number six. Let's do number six
after the first break from our sponsor and we're back

(24:13):
then and we were just about to talk about number
six on the list. So you cannot buy a new
sign f R S in Brazil. However, you can purchase
a Prius for the sum of thirty six thousand, five
hundred and fifty nine dollars. That's right. Yeah, So it's
it's quite a bit more expensive than the twenty four

(24:34):
thousand that we talked about. Um initially, and there's a
good reason for this. Brazil is just a ridiculously expensive
place again to buy and own a vehicle. It's the
taxes and fees are over one in some cases. Uh,
there's a poor selection of cars. But the person that
wrote in and suggested this and says that the selection
is getting better, they have to admit, Um, okay, the

(24:56):
over tax and over priced gas. Okay. So I looked
this up, right because I thinking, how expensive can it
possibly be? And it's yeah, I was thinking, and I
initially was really startled by the number. But I'll tell
you what happened. I forgot to convert it to US dollars.
I was looking at UM. I think it's called the
Brazilian real. Is that the currency, the real? Alright, so
it's spelled r e l um. It's about three point

(25:20):
nine four uh Brazilian reals per leader. I'm gonna try
to get get through this. Uh So that's about a
dollar twenty one US per leader, and of course there's
almost four leaders per gallon, so it's three point seven eight.
So I did the conversion. I came out with fourteen
point eight nine. But that's actually I was thinking dollars

(25:40):
at the time, right as they can as think in
no way they're playing almost fifteen dollars a gallon for fuel.
But that's not that's not the truth. Truth. They're paying
almost fifteen Brazilian reals per per gallon. So that means, uh,
it's approximately four or fifty seven per gallon right now,
and that's an increase. I mean they've gone way up
in the last year. Petroleum is very expensive. This is
coming from a place called Global Petrol Prices dot com

(26:04):
if you want to look it up for yourself. Yeah,
And I feel like it's important to add something here
because everybody listening in probably in Western Europe just went
I wish I could you know, pay less than five
dollars a gallon gas? Right, But this comes with you know,
a wealth of other problems. Brazil has the mix tape

(26:26):
of reasons why it's expensive. Well, yeah, another one is bureaucracy, right,
and there's a lot of that, the legendary Yeah, of course.
And we talked about taxes already. There's tax and fee.
There are fees that are over a pent for some
of these vehicles. So imagine getting that you know, that
prius for five and having to pay a percent tax
on that on top of that. UM And I know

(26:46):
that's maybe not necessarily case everywhere across the board, but
there are places where that is the case. It does happen.
So it just as an example, um if you look
at a okay, here's here's the one where they did
like a um a US comparison to what they have there.
All right, So in the US A and this is
back again fourteen number because it was so Toyota Corolla

(27:09):
from you know, the year fourteen in the United States
started around sixteen thousand dollars and they considered a compact car.
No argument there. Right In Brazil, the Toyoto Corolla Foreen
had a twenty five thousand dollar starting price, and they
consider it a luxury car. So how do you think
they're going to tax a luxury car versus a compact

(27:30):
car car. That's that's one of the games they play.
They relabel things to what they're not. I mean it's
I mean, they're that's considered a luxury car, Corolla. I mean,
I don't know, I don't see that. I just don't
see it. But I mean, guess maybe that's one of
the nicer cars there at that time. Yeah, that's the possibility,
but it's still not a luxury car. Oh and of course,
we we do want to point out I think we

(27:50):
said earlier that this information may have changed slightly because
it came from a few years back, not too many
years back. I you know, I'd like to introduce number
five just by reading a quote and asking everyone to guess, uh,
and I'll modify it so the answer is not in
the not in the quotation for number five. When carmakers

(28:14):
organized the first drive events for the press, they leave
this group for last because they will smash the cars anyway.
It is a given. Oh boy, m m mmm. Now
who fits that that's a stereotype, of course, but they're
saying that it's true, right, the person that's they're saying
this is a fact. This is what happens when they
do the car ride and drives. Number five on our

(28:36):
list is China. Yep, China. All right. So here's the
thing about China. They've they're they're relatively new to having cars,
if you want to look at it that way. I
guess they have a lot of motorcycle transportation, have other stuff.
But they get they get a lot of new cars
now they get I mean, they'll have special editions that
are made just for China as a matter of fact,
but they're really really expensive if you get a car

(28:58):
in China. We've talked about Chinese cars in the past
two ben We have an episode somewhere in our history
of Chinese knockoff cars. You know, the ones that look
exactly like uh, let's say a BMW, but they call
it something else. That's may I don't remember the company
names for any of these, but they have something that
looks exactly like a smart car, but it's not a
smart car, doesn't have any kind of the like any
kind of the safety features or doesn't have any of

(29:20):
the crash standards, and it may not have the performance
if it appears to be a muscle car. Yes, exactly,
and they milt and they do build stuff like that. Now,
if it's not a knockoff, it's probably you know, it's
gonna be the real deal, and it's gonna be expensive.
And they do, as I said, they make special editions
of some incredible supercars just for China. So you know,
you can get a Pegani, you can get a Lamborghini.

(29:42):
There's even you know, like Grand Cherokees, BMW's. Um, there's
just one. I'm gonna struggle with it. I think I've
said this name on this episode or on this show before. Ben.
There's a company that makes a limousine there called the
L five Limousine, and the company's name is h O
n G. That's Hong right, and then Q I h

(30:03):
O n G. Q I okay, it makes more sense.
You know what, I was gonna guess what Honky? Isn't
that right? Q I Y No. I think it's much
more funny if we say it's the Honky limousine, the
all five limousine from Oh Boy. That'd be great for

(30:25):
their US. Anyways, this thing looks like I mean, it
looks like a retro Rolls Royce. It has a like
an older look to it, almost lately. But it's like
eight hundred thousand dollars, so it's expensive. And of course
the you know the supercars that I was talking about,
not not the Jeep and not the BMW, but you know,
like Lamborghini and Ferrari makes something for them too. And
again those are special edition cars that are just for

(30:47):
China liver of the population very very small. They're far
far from the reach of the average Chinese national. We
should add there's another thing happening there that is lending
to the expense of cars, and it goes into government regulation.

(31:07):
I know you and I have mentioned this before, but
it doesn't China have the license plate system that restricts
driving to certain days of the week. Yeah, I think
it does, just to combat the tremendous pollution problem. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
So there's a lot of vehicles there, and you know,
they've started switching over their their motorcycles and mopeds and
you know, they're they're get little get around vehicles that

(31:28):
are two wheeled to electric. So there's a lot of
electric vehicles that are in use now in cities there too. Um,
but yeah, it's it's a strange market. It's a big
it's a it's a big market actually to get into
for automakers. But the problem is again same with the
number ten. You know one one our list, you our
countries on our list, communist run nation, and you're gonna
have to deal with you know, these these rules that

(31:50):
can just be changed at a whim and say that's
that's how we did it last week, but we're not
doing that this week, right right? You you can't even
drive to the place where you're supposed to bribe someone
because your license doesn't let you drive on Wednesdays or
your tag what an example. Yeah, okay, okay, I'm milking
it a little, I understand, But yeah, it's a it's

(32:10):
a it's a different world than what we're accustomed to
living in. Really, I mean really, it's it's completely different.
So let's say that we are I like this idea hypothetically,
if you, Tyler and I just hopping around the world
trying to buy a car somewhere somewhere that we're not
used to. So let's say it didn't work out for us,
in Beijing, and we traveled to Nicaragua before on the list. Yeah, okay,

(32:34):
really not not a great idea to travel to Nicaragua.
We should have done some research in advance because it
does turn out that you can buy a Scion there,
but they won't tell you the price. We don't know yet. Yeah,
they won't tell you the price of it. It's just
it's probably an outlandish price because this is one of
those regions I guess where you're gonna spend like as
someone wrote in here and said, you're gonna spend several

(32:57):
thousands of dollars for a twenty US your old beater car.
You know something that's it's ridiculous. I mean maybe even
you know the amount that it will cost you for
a new car. That's how that's expensive. This place is
it's kind of like, um, it's pointing. It's painting rather
a pretty bleak picture of uh, the overall car market,
I guess in all of Latin America. Yeah, they were like,

(33:19):
it's it's even worse than Costa Rica. Scott, could you
do the show a massive favor and please read that
quotation of what happens if you do manage to own
a car, okay. So if you do manage to own
a car, okay, So let's say that if you do,
if you can, if you can even afford a car,
which most people there can't, if you do own one,

(33:39):
expect to all of course, it'll break down constantly, right,
It's right, that'll happen, and then be it will get
stolen almost immediately. It says, forget buying a new car,
because they're simply just aren't any there. Even if it were,
the import TIFFs are so high that you can't because
you're broken. That means that overall, the level of income there,
it's pretty low. And that happened. That's that's happening all

(34:02):
over the world. There's a lot of places where income
levels are low, but they're still able to get vehicles.
They still have something. But it sounds like this, this
again pretty bleak picture of what's going on in Nicaragua
and really all of Latin America. I mean, it's not
it's not a great car market. It's not a great
place for someone to own a vehicle. And I mean
probably even like the old work truck that's in this
photo here, that's probably worth a fortune, you know, and

(34:23):
it's something that's making money for the person that owns it.
That's a sensible choice. But you wouldn't want to get like,
you know, it's something that's just a like a second
car for the weekend or something. You can't do that.
And we're I'm laughing at the language here, but this
is a real and serious problem. Uh. Car theft is

(34:44):
common in so many Central American countries. I can't speak
to South American countries because I haven't traveled there yet,
but I can say that in Central America, cars just
get stolen and you've had Did you ever rent a
car in Mexico? No, Ben, No, No, I don't. I
don't rent a car when I go to Mexico. Ever,

(35:05):
I don't blame you, man, because I remember, if I
remember correctly, even if you own your own car and
you already have existing insurance, and you let your insurance
company know that you're going to take your car to Mexico,
they charge you a different rate which goes by the day. Yeah,
it's expensive and and but I've just heard of too
many shenanigans happening at the rental car return places, you know,

(35:29):
like with you bring a car back that still in
decent shape, and then they'd call you a week later
and tell you that that wreck car that you brought
back is still off the road and they're charging you
for you know, the daily fee that whatever that would be,
you know, their daily rental. I guess there's a there's
stuff like that that happens. I don't know what happens
all over the world, but I've heard of just too
many times down in some of the resort cities in Mexico,
and I just I've just stayed away from it from

(35:51):
the very beginning. I I try to take the airport shuttle,
you know, from the hotel or something like that. I
try to take a cab, you know, as long as
it's the right licensing. And it's again, you have to
be cautious when you go to these places, you know,
with what you do, and renting a car in Mexico's
one of those things I'm just really extra cautious about.
And now we're on the verge of our top three

(36:11):
most expensive places to own a car. We will tell
you what those top three places are along with an
important announcement. After a word from our sponsor, we are
back Scott. I've got the I've got the announcement. Here

(36:32):
I'm I'm opening my fake envelope of Scott and Ben's
sudden realizations. Oh yeah, we have had a sudden realization,
and here it is. We are not going to be
able to get to the best of worse cities, yet
we're the best and worst states. They were going to
have to be an episode for a future date because
we were exploring so many strange, interesting car cultures in

(36:56):
other countries, and we still have three left. Yeah, so
we'll get to those today. We'll get to that, but
we're just not going to get to the best and
worst cities. And that's some good information in that too.
We promise we'll get to that. It's gonna happen in
an episode. That's gonna happen, you know, very soon, we promised. Yeah,
it'll happen. It has to, it does. We've already done
the studying for it. Yeah, I can't take a loss
in this, like all we get all right, So where

(37:19):
were we were at? We were at number three, right,
Yes we are, and number three is Indonesia, which might
surprise some people. But the problem is that the car
prices there are for a number of factors, just far
in excess of what you would normally expect. I can
provide some detail on this one, if least, right. So,

(37:41):
so the price of that that scion FRS that we've
been talking about you this whole episode in Indonesia. Instead
of being what was it thirty six five I think
I said something like that at the beginning, it's fifty
nine thousand, six hundred and sixty six dollars. So it's essentially,
let's just call it double. It's double the M S
R p A in the United States, right, So it's

(38:02):
kind of crazy. The Indonesian car prices come with with
extra craziness. So so that's according to the person that
wrote in here on this this Jelopnik article. And they
say that the Prius just a normal Prius. Yeah, so
we talked about that price too. That was twenty four
thou right, price of a Prius in Indonesia, about sixty

(38:22):
dollars sixty grand for Prius. Jeez, you know, we've got
let's pause here on this one for just a moment.
Let's spend some time. Let's spend some gentle reflection time.
Am I am I mistaken? Or when you were talking
about getting your your your new vehicle, because you're you're
still considering a new vehicle. Ye didn't you just for

(38:43):
a moment say to me, shouldn't I should I consider
a Prius? Did you say that? I asked, asked what
you thought of Prius is and you said no, way, no,
How I immediately said no, And I'll tell you. And
it's not that I hate the car or anything like that.
But we've got a co worker here. Her name is Well,
I used to say, it's Allison. Allison. We've talked about

(39:03):
Alison in the past. Remember the Rats and a Prius. Yeah,
that was the the Rats and prehistory. She she's driven
a Prius for a while and she calls it, this
is her words, the most boring car in the world.
She just doesn't like it. It's her daily commuting car.
I mean, it's a great car for getting around the city.
It hauls the kids that you know, it goes, It
goes wherever they need to because it's a hybrid, so

(39:24):
they don't have to worry about, you know, having range
anxiety or anything like that. You know, it's still gas fed. However,
it just has no style, no get up and go
that she she really wants. It's just not it's just
not the vehicle that she thought it was initially. I
think she was excited by the green factor of that vehicle,
but not necessarily the performance. And I heard her husband.

(39:45):
I think he drives something like a like a Mini
Cooper s like the John Works Edition or something else,
like a special edition Mini, And so it's got a
lot of pep and it's a lot of fun to drive.
But then they get in this one and it's just
kind of kind of blah. And maybe that's part of it,
is that she's comparing it to her husband's car. It's
a little different. Um. But again, I can't imagine paying

(40:06):
sixty thousand dollars for a priest. Yeah, I mean, I
I'm not trying to completely come down on the priest,
but gosh, I mean for sixty thoud dollars, I think
there's a lot of other choices you can I can
have maybe maybe not in Indonesia. I don't think it's
meant to be a sixty tho dollar car. No, it's not.
It's that's the thing. It's not priced that way. And
that's that's part of what's going on here. These these

(40:28):
prices are just so jacked up because I mean, here's
here's a term that I think it's the first time
we've come across this, this term. So this uh, this
writer that wrote into the Delaptant article and kind of
mentioned these prices in Indonesia, they ask, what about the
toyol borrow? Boy? I said it again, Toyo brew, Toyo burrew.
That's it. That's it. That's I'm having trouble with that one.

(40:48):
But what that means really is a sign f R
S and the and the super rup b r Z.
I just haven't heard him called that the twins, right,
I like it about sixty five dollars, that's not a shock.
I guess that must be the price for the br
Z because remember we said the FRS is around sixty thousand,
and you go, what about a Christler three d Okay,
well that's they have a base price for that here

(41:08):
in the United States is around thirty five six. Right,
they're in Indonesia. It's a one hundred and ten thousand dollars.
You must be kidding. Do you want an M three? Right?
All right, that's about sixty four thousand here in the
United States, But that's one hundred and seventy five thousand
in Indonesia. Okay, okay, what about something in Italian like
a four? Alright, so you want a Ferrari, right, Yeah,

(41:29):
it's about two hundred and thirty thousand m s r
P back in two thousand twelve here in the United States.
Seven hundred thousand dollars in Indonesia. Maybe that's crazy to
go back and buy cars. That's three things, okay, alright, alright,
Well what about a base model Rolls Royce Ghost. Okay,
that's about three hundred and five thousand in the United States,

(41:52):
still pretty expensive. One million U S dollars in Indonesia
one millions, and we're going from three hundred thousand up
to a million for that's just the starting price. So again,
Indonesia is not too car buyer friendly. I guess new
new are used really and the reason, one of the
primary reasons for that is the two hundred percent important tax.

(42:15):
All right, So there we go. That's the reason. The
that's the reason the three hundred sees a hundred and away,
say a hundred hundred I think crazy, alright, So yeah,
I mean again, these import taxes trying to get the
new vehicles to that region. That part of the world
is difficult. But then again, you've got the government playing
a huge role in that, you know, the the Indonesian government,

(42:35):
and they are just jacking things up so that you know,
they make as much money as they possibly can off
of every sale. So in this hypothetical car buying extravaganza, you,
Tyler and I have had not very much luck, and
so we say, hey, we're already in the neighborhood. Let's
go to Malaysia. See how things work out there, because

(42:56):
that's number two on the list. Number two on the list. Now,
say is we're talking about Southeast Asia. It is both
the capitals what Kouala, Lampur. I think, so that's a
crowded city. I can imagine that there's a lot of
vehicles there. The problem is they didn't have an understanding
of what a what a luxury car is. I guess
as as this writer put it, um they say that

(43:18):
in Malaysia, the here's that word again, the toil toil buru.
There you go, I think I got it. That say,
like it's a guy's name and you're yelling at him
from doing something wrong. Toyol Buru. Yeah, twins cost around
seventy five dollars new. So that's equivalent to what we
just saw in Indonesia, right, so the same region of
the world. I guess I can kind of understand this. Um,

(43:38):
the Mercedes SLS A MG costs around six hundred thousand
dollars brand new. Holy cow. All right? Um oh here, okay,
this is what they're talking about now. When they said
that they didn't have a problem understanding what a luxury
car is, we talked about that with the Toyota Corolla
to right here it comes again back on the list
of you know, another crazy vehicle being called the luxury car.

(44:00):
They say, this is where a Beije mobile such as
the Accord or camera are considered a luxury car. Funny
they called a Beije mobile. Um, many Malaysians spec cars
lack and safety feed a lot, a lot and safety feature. Sorry,
this is a little broken English. I'm trying to read. Uh,
it lacks a lot of safety features but still hold
a high price. They don't. They don't back it down
because it's less safe due to these high excise taxes

(44:22):
and a protection policy for our local car maker Proton.
Many people here can only dream of owning a BRZ
or even a mayata, masa miyata. So what they're saying
is like, you want to buy a Proton, no problem,
We've got those. You can buy those all day long.
If you want to import a car, you know, something
that's not made here in Malaysia, that's where you have
the trouble. That's where we're gonna you know, throw on

(44:44):
import price or you know whatever, whatever it was in Indonesia.
And so will arrive Scott after a long and frankly
ill fated journey trying to buy a car in foreign countries. You,
Tyler and I take one last shot at the worst
decision we could have made in this situation. Tyler, can

(45:05):
we have a drum roll for this? Please? Perfect? All right?
The number one the worst Singapore the worst. It's right
near Malaysia, right, I mean it's very very close. We're
talking about the same area. This is an island city
state off of the southern part of Malaysia, so it's
right there. Um, the price of a new sign FRS

(45:27):
that we've been talking about the whole episode, right, this
is crazy. Ben one hundred and thirty five thousand, four
d twenty one dollars plus you never know what they're
gonna throw on top of that, right, all right, So
hundred and thirty five thousand, four hundred dollars for this
car that costs US here in the United States about
thirty five thirty six somewhere in there Prius, if you

(45:47):
want to look at a Prius, that's about a hundred
and fifty four thousand dollars for a Prius at the
same time in Singapore. So Singapore is far and away
the most expensive country to buy an own a card.
Of course they've got reasons for this, of course, strict
government regulations, very strict government regulations. I would guess that
they're trying to get you to buy into those protons

(46:08):
from over in Leisier or something. Um, that's probably part
of it. There's taxes at least, if not like you
had talked about for the importance, right, So if you
want to bring in anything, whether that's a used car,
a new car, or whatever, you're gonna pay that price. Um.
And there's also requirements of Um. There's something called a
certificate of entitlement. Yeah, So the certificate of entitlement concept

(46:33):
is one of the more controversial and heavily debated public
policies in Singapore. Here's how it works. You have to
have one to get a car. Let's say you you
get past the very high import taxes and you've made
your peace with the idea that you're in general not
going to be allowed to modify your car. Both of

(46:54):
those are bummers, and they're true whether you're buying a
car or a motorcycle. You have to bid for a
thing called a certificate of entitlement, and that means that
each month they the government allows a certain number of
certificate of entitlement or c oes to be released forbidding,

(47:15):
and if you are successful, which is a big if
and inexpensive, if the entitlement is valued valid for ten
years from the date of the registration. The whole point
of this is Singapore is terrified of drowning in cars
and they want to with this scheme keep long term

(47:36):
vehicle population growth at about three percent a year. A
couple of things are exempted from this school buses, public buses,
ambulances and stuff. So wait a minute, So what if
you're a private but not for private citizens? Right, Nope.
So if you're a private citizen, you can just say like, well,
it's a school bus, I can drive that wherever I want,
because it takes up that takes up eight times of space.
So you can try, but God only knows. You have

(47:58):
to do our own episode on how to get get
around Okay, is densely populated. I mean it's it really is.
So you know, keeping growth, you know, like new car
growth at three percent, that's uh. I mean they're doing
it artificially. Obviously, they're trying to do that so that, um,
as you said, they won't be drowning in cars. I mean,
look at look at photos of of Singapore right now,

(48:20):
you'll see that the streets are crowded already, right, I mean,
it's it's it's I can see where it could quickly
become a huge problem for them if it hasn't already. Right,
And I know that some people will say, we'll argue, well,
at least there's a price you can attach, which makes
it different from Cuba, for instance, right, uh, And in Singapore,

(48:42):
at least we know that there are members of the
population who will have the scratch or the cheddar to
pay these ridiculous prices. I can see that. But still
this is prohibitively expensive. You can't do multiple bids. Oh,
this also doesn't count your registration fees. Uh. This all
also changes when you are uh, depending on if you're

(49:05):
a private citizen, private individual excuse me, or a company
car owner and uh you have a separate thing. They're
called road taxes. This is just okay, you know what
this is a Susian man. Yeah, so so Singapore is
just far and away the most expensive country to buy
and own a car in. So uh to stay away
from there if you if you are an enthusiast, right,

(49:27):
because that would be a difficult place to live. And
also stay away from Malaysia. Stay away from Cuba's daily
I mean the whole everything. Everyone on the list is
a is a bad place to be. I guess if
you're an enthusiast, really, because you just can't get what
you want or it's gonna the rules are always changing.
It's an ever changing you know game board that you're
trying to play with and it this isn't gonna work
if you do. Uh, if you do have experience buying
cars in these markets, first off, congratulations you are brilliant

(49:53):
or very lucky, or crazy or crazy or all three. Uh,
And we would like to hear your story. Scott and
I are gonna call it a day for now and
head out on. Let's see. I've got a little driving
ahead of me today, and I am probably going to
be in a good mood about it, you know what
I mean? Yeah, sure, yeah, because we're in We're in

(50:14):
a great place right now, right yeah, I mean, and
I guess that wherever people are listening right now, they
either feel like the same that they're in a great
place or maybe they're in one of these uh places
is not so great for enthusiasm. And we're not I
love to hear it. Yeah, we're not dinging any We're
not dinging these countries because in many cases, what they're
doing is their level best to institute a policy that

(50:36):
they feel will have benefits down the road for the
most the highest number of people. Uh do we agree
with it? I'm gonna say no, you know what been
some and some some that's the case, but others I
think it's just strictly it's all about money for the government,
it really think. And several of those yes, absolutely, Yeah. So,
I mean I think there's a mix here of just well, okay,

(50:58):
there's a there's a big mix of things here, well
intentioned uh well, intentioned politicians and then straight up corrupt
and buzzlers. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, yeah, and so several of
the places we've talked about. But but you're right, I
would I would love for people to call in and
or call in what year we in. We should get
a call and we should be cool. We could trade
people's suggestions on their people. We could have live episodes.

(51:22):
I guess I'd be kind of cool. Al right, So anyways,
people should right in with any kind of suggestions that
they may have. Were We've got what, We've got a Facebook,
we're car stuff HSW. We've got Twitter again car stuff HSW.
We have Instagram now, which is true to us. And
uh and of course you can always write in We're
we're always reading our email. We're always replying to emailways

(51:42):
I'm trying to uh, so you can do that. And
we've got an address and that is car stuff at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think, send an email to
podcast that how stuff Works dot com. Mmmmmm hm