Car Buying In Thailand

I recently finished my registration report for my first 16 months in Thailand.  It’s nothing fantastic, but I've not included it, if you'd like to give it a read, let me know and I'll share it with you from my google documents site- just leave your email address for me in the comments... I’m not sure if 42 pages of anything can be enjoyable, but, hey, give it a whirl.  It’s a snapshot of what I have experienced in this country so far.  My opinions are strictly my own, and could be very far from the truth.  

This is my first blog entry in quite some time, so I’m going to write about cars in Thailand.  More specifically, I’m going to address our new car and our new-found freedom.  I’m not certain as to why we decided to neglect buying a car during our initial few months here, but I think it has something to do with the fact that we lived extremely close to the BTS, or SkyTrain, and could easily get back and forth from school on a daily basis.  Additionally, we were fairly engrossed in our language courses, and had very little time to travel- Chula’s Intensive Thai program doesn’t provide a great deal of time to partake in fun activities.  However, I think the main factor had to do with our blissful ignorance of how little time we actually have remaining in this country.  After all, in the larger scale of things, three plus years is not a long time.  

Anyway, after moving from our apartment to our house, I purchased a motorcycle and was comfortable, though Shara was not, making the trip back and forth from school on a daily basis.  I also shuttled Shara back and forth from the train on a daily basis.  Alas, it started getting hot (hotter?) than usual, so showing up to class drenched in sweat was starting to get old.  After looking for a car for a few months, we heard there was going to be a large auto show a few weeks ago and decided to take a look at the cars there. 

Allow me to follow this tangent for a bit: auto shows in Thailand are the thing of legend.  There are dancers, plenty of beautifully and not-so-beautifully, made up women peddling flesh cars.  So there we were sitting with a dealer and we couldn’t help but notice the throngs of people around us purchasing vehicles.  These weren’t high society-types, either.  These were middle-class and lower middle-class Thais sitting around tables crunching numbers coming to a “reasonable” monthly payment.  We even saw plenty of folks making telephone calls to banks.  I was simply stunned by the drama taking place in front of us.  

The piece de resistance was the farang (white dude) with his Thai wife (there's so many other descriptions I want to put here, but I'll refrain) and disinterested and disrespectful loving teenage stepson.  By the looks of his clothes, he could not have been a businessman, but, most probably, an English teacher at one of the local schools.  He simply looked defeated as they hashed out the payment plan.  I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the life he imagined living when he came to Thailand...obviously not, but I did wonder if he had any idea that this was in store for him.  But I digress... 

So Shara and I haggled through options that the dealer would throw in for the new car and headed back home with the promise of a new car available to us in a few days.  I called trusty USAA and took out a small loan to secure our vehicle, rather than shell out anything from our savings.  After three days, I had the money transferred to the dealer in the form of a Thai cashier’s check and we were ready to pick up our vehicle.  

Shara asked the dealer how many vehicles her dealer sold on their day- their day, meaning each of the Toyota dealers had only one day to sell cars at the show.  She responded with, “Over 350 cars.”  Absolutely amazing.  Can you imagine the sheer volume in sales that one dealer did that day?  Let’s simply speculate that the average price they sold a new car for was $25,000 US.  That’s almost $9 million in sales in one day!  I don’t think this to be an anomaly, either.  That leads me to wonder, in a country where the average household GDP is just under $7500 US, how these folks will make the payments?  I still don’t quite understand the process of payment, debt, loans, and repossession of vehicles works, but I’m sure it’s a complicated process.  

Considering the tariff on vehicles is 300%- e.g. our old car, a Volvo S60R, around $40,000 US new, would cost over $120,000 US here!  How in the hell do people afford these things?  Considering the number of exotic sports cars I see here, I have to wonder what the actual average household GDP really is.  

Anyway, we’re happy with what we have- a cheap compact sedan that can get us from place to place... and, yes, we already have around 1000km logged on the odometer!  

Maybe tomorrow, I'll talk about the Songkran festival and make this blog all culture-filled... or maybe I'll talk about my experiences I run into tomorrow when I try and get a visa from the Burmese Embassy.  Stay tuned.