Taiwan car shopping

Two of my goals in life are to live without a car or a TV. I've owned or possessed a car pretty contiguously for 22 years. In 1996, I had to surrender my first car, a '77 Pontiac Grand Prix (monster) to a junkyard when leaving Florida (was only road worth by Florida's standards) and soon after got my hands on a used Chevy Caprice (also a monster) after moving back to CT. Then there was the time, in said Chevy, that I was in a head on collision with a lady who veered into my lane and left me with no where to go but through her and her car. She survived, at least long enough to inform the authorities that she had no license or insurance. Neither car survived the crash...

When arriving in Taiwan my company set me up with a rental which they provided for a period of time so that I could get a permanent car. In the meantime, a friend of mine was trying to sell my Tacoma back in the States. It's difficult for foreigners to get car loans here so my plan was to sell the truck, get the cash here and then buy a car. I swore I would never buy a new car again but I had my heart set on the Honda FIT as the whole "magic seat" idea seems really cool and I need to be able to haul a bike around. The FIT has only been in Taiwan for 2 years and the residual is so great with Honda it almost makes no sense to buy one a year old as it's not much cheaper than a brand new one so why take the risk? I've owned a Pontiac, 2 Chevys, a VW and a Toyota. My wife once had a Honda Prelude with 220k miles on it that drove perfectly fine the day she donated it to charity and got a Mini Cooper. A set of plug wires for that Honda was $21 shipped to my door! What a great car. So I am a real fanboy of Hondas and Toyotas, even though sometimes the gas pedal stick on Toyotas but that's what they make airbags for, right?

If I ever buy another German car I give you permission to restrain me and check me into a psycho ward. Upon arriving in Taiwan I had a Toyota Altis which is a Corolla, of sorts. For those that don't know, the selection of cars in different countries is not equivalent to the U.S. I had people suggesting cars to me that were shocked that certain models were not available in Taiwan. Europe is similar. In some cases they rename the car, in other cases it's just not available. After a few weeks in the Altis it was getting expensive as I was now bearing the 800NT/day cost, which is actually not bad for a rental, but I found out that my company has a shuttle from downtown Taipei for 50NT each way which is only 10NT more than the toll so it's almost free, other than the fact that I need to take the MRT to get downtown. But I arguably need a car, long term, for many reasons; pretend that they are valid for the sake of this story. Oh, I have to pick my wife and cat and quarantine inspector and luggage up from the airport, how's that?
The thing that sucked about the shuttle bus is I lost at least 1.5 hours of my life each day due to the commuting time and the inflexibility of having to live by the shuttle schedule. Once I had some cash on hand I set off for the Honda dealer in Beitou to check out a FIT. I walked in and there was plenty of staff standing around at 8:05 PM but I was informed that the sales staff goes home at 8. There were 3 or 4 people in Honda polo shirts hanging out and chatting so they weren't mechanics. How do you operate a business that sells stuff and send home all the people that sell the stuff and keep the business open? If you would find this as frustrating as I did, you will find such circumstances all over Taiwan. It's the land of 100% employment. I will gripe about this in many future posts, get used to it.

I came back the next day and made sure to get there a bit sooner. I went to the same desk of Honda staffers and they brought me to meet the salesman, who introduced himself as "Mr...", a bit formal, especially since he was only 25 years old, has been with Honda for 3 months, and this is his first job, ever. Typical for Taiwan so I'm told. This poor kid was shaking and terrified from the moment he laid eyes on me; it was the "oh no he's going to speak English to me" reaction. He was constantly apologizing for his poor English. I thought the Honda dealer would have a sales rep with strong English since being able to lie fluently is a key trait for a car salesman and I would think being able to lie in as many languages as possible would increase profits. He instantly asked me if I wanted to look at a CRV. I guess most Westerners must go for the CRV.

Oh, by the way, I am kinda surprised that big cars are common here. Gas is pretty cheap by world standards and only a bit more expensive than in the U.S. I asked to look at the FIT and he showed me the showroom demo car. While it's kinda neat that the seats fold flat, it falls quite short of worthiness of the term "magic". Make it disappear into the floor; now, that's magic. We messed around with every feature in the car and I asked him if we could go for a test ride. He said I need to have an International Drivers License to be able to go for the test ride and I know I spoiled his night when I pulled it out of my murse. I thought he was going to vomit.

He was practically shaking when he handed me the keys to the test car. I wasn't sure if it was because Americans are bad drivers in his mind or he was feeling the weight of the responsibility of being in charge of the test car or what. But near the end of the test ride, after trying to informally chat it up with him to ease his nerves and maybe give him some English confidence, I asked, "So does anyone ever crash the test car?" He said, "very often". Now that I think about it...there's no way you could get me to take a job riding around with random Taiwanese people. The only Taiwanese I ride with are bus and taxi drivers and I figure, they must be the cream of the crop. They may drive like inconsiderate maniacs, but they can handle the vehicle, unlike those who crash on a Honda test drive. I think he was just shell shocked about the test drive regardless of my nationality.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed. The car barely has any features to it. The knobs and fixtures seemed a bit cheap, and the car isn't even made in Japan but rather, Taiwan. There were none available for immediate purchase, the sticker price was 630k NT and it is supposedly non-negotiable, and I couldn't even get free money out of the deal as they were dead set on 4.5%APR (if I could get a Taiwanese guarantor to even get the loan and put 40% down or thereabouts). I basically decided I was NOT going to pay $20k USD in cash for THIS car. I suspect it's still a quality car even though it's made in Taiwan but knowing that they are getting some sort of kickback from Taiwan, it's a tough pill to swallow to give them THAT much profit. I decided to focus on a used car.

There is a good website for used car searching in Taiwan at http://www.ocar.com.tw/. One great thing about it is the menu system is all ASCII based so it functions well within Google Translate and allows you to filter by many options including region. The problem is almost all of the cars are in Taichung and many have testified that those prices are false advertised just to get you to come down to Taichung for some bait n switch action. You'll see in those ads that the dealers are all to eager to come pick you up at the rail station and then drive you to their lot. Sounds to me as painful as a timeshare where they haul you away somewhere and then don't let you leave until you buy some condo across the street from the beach with some crazy management fee.

Another option was: our company uses a guy who handles corporate leases, rentals, etc. and sometimes offers the leftovers up for sale. I had a colleague contact him to get the list of what was currently available hoping to strike gold but there was nothing with less than 100k mileage (or is it called "kilometerage"?) and I would be hesitant to buy a rental car anyway as most people beat the crap out of them. This guy claims to let you know the pedigree and lists which ones were rental fleets and which were lease to corporate types. We have also had leases within our company get transferred as a sale coworkers leave this division, which is the safest bet but only comes along every once in a while. I also was really set on a car that could transport my bike with some ease and most of this guy's cars were Toyota Corollas. My boss said I might be able to get a good deal through this guy on a 5 series. Does he know how much he's paying me?

My next option was a guy that I got in contact through the Taiwan web forum http://www.forumosa.com/ who is a professional vehicle sourcer/inspector. He charges an up front deposit and then a finders fee when you actually purchase the car. If you tell him the car you are looking for, his job is to find it (typically on a used car lot), inspect it, negotiate, and do everything else to seal the deal.

So I contacted him and had some discussions and honed in on the Nissan Tiida (aka Versa in the States). After a few days and reading some reviews on the Tiida, I switched over to the Suzuki Swift. The Swift being a little more stylish, a little cheaper, and perhaps a bit better equipped for the price. After about a week the guy had found 2 models that he thought looked nice, a 2005 and a 2007. We made plans to go look at the 2005 as it seemed the better bang for the buck. He conveniently picked me up at the Shilin MRT and the lot was close by. We gave it the once over and I gave him the thumbs up to do the full inspection. He brings along some tools, a jack and jackstands and does it all right there on site. Very thorough, not just major mechanics but he goes through every electrical feature down to the radio. He quickly found that the driver door power lock mechanism was broken but everything else looked really good, save for the wiper blades which the dealer replaced.

Since it was Dragon Boat festival holiday they couldn't get the lock fixed so we made arrangements to come back in a few days so it would be ready to go. He also handled haggling over the price as he's fluent in Mandarin (and fluent in "car salesman") and the amount he was able to haggle off exceeded his fee so unless you think you are going to successfully haggle with a Chinese speaking used car dealer, his service pays for itself. We came back and squared away the financials, reinspected the repaired door lock, and made arrangements to come back again the next night to talk insurance.

On top of the price of the car is tax, registration and insurance at about $10k NT for the rest of the year but the insurance laws here are really lax. So I'll talk with an agent about actually getting insurance that may be of use. I was advised not to wreck the car tonight, wait until I have real insurance.

It was nice to be able to drive to work again and not take the MRT all over Taipei to get a shuttle bus to backtrack to work. Costly, but nice. The one mishap I had was fumbling with the key-less ignition. You have a fob that you carry somewhere on your person. The car senses it and you can just press a button to unlock the door. The ignition looks much like a regular ignition except you can just turn it with your hand. But you have to press it in, turn it until it stops, then release the pressure, and continue to turn it in the same direction and the car will start. Took a few times to figure that one out as it was already started for me when I drove it off the dealer's lot.

Things I like about the car:

• It's Japanese (at least in some fashion)
• Unlike my rental, the head unit can play MP3/WMA CDs so I can get back to learning Mandarin on CD
• Has a live fuel mileage that reads in km/liter so I get a good workout on my metric math skills
• You press a button and the side view mirrors automatically fold in so they don't get sheared off in the mechanical car park
• 60/40 split rear means I might be able to come up with a scenario to transport my wife, cat and quarantine officer from the airport to the vet hospital that doesn't involve strapping the cat carrier to the roof
• Key-less entry means I can just stuff the FOB in my murse and not have to worry about forgetting my car keys but instead, forget all my other keys now that I'm desensitized to keys
• Better gas mileage than any other vehicle I've owned
• It has climate control and I can pretend that I actually think it's that much different than just adjusting the coldness and fan to a setting that makes you comfortable.
• Like my cell phone, it's not available in the U.S. I can always get a Versa or a FIT when I get back. Actually the Swift is supposedly coming to the States in 2011 so I can accuse anyone that gets one back home of being a bandwagonner.
• And the best feature of all, when you open the door there is a chrome rail along the floor that says Swift on it, and it lights up! But that's not all. There's a button in the console that allows you to change the color of the light!

Wouldn't it be great if they had that feature where the entire car body lit up and you could change the color? I bet such a car would be road legal here. I talked to the shippers yesterday and it should be about 5 more weeks before the TV shows up so I can continue to live half of the dream... With that said I'm headed out to find a TV at a bar tomorrow night to watch the U.S. World Cup game.