We bought a car !

We bought a car today. Now before I tell you which car it is, let me explain why we chose this particular car. First of all , most cars around here are white Japanese cars and for a good reason : They're cheap, white doesn't attract too much heat and they are very reliable. You'll see plenty of Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Mazda's ( sorry if I forgot a few makes ). Holden here is considered a "younger generation car" ( read : Pimp car ) and European cars are exclusive cars, mostly driven by ignorant European immigrants who buy their favorite European brand and then find themselves locked to huge service bills and garages refusing to help you.
So that shortens the list quite a lot. If you're 25+ , you really don't want to be seen driving a Holden, and you certainly don't want a Peugeot or Volkswagen or something like that unless you're a millionaire and you import your own spare parts. So the choice over here is pretty much limited to Mazda / Toyota / Subaru / Mitsubishi / Honda. All of them are good cars, they're pretty much all the same in fuel consumption ( their smallest models will have a 140 hp 1.8 engine, their top models anything like a V6 or V8 ).

Now here's where the sheep-technique comes in. Ever been sent to the shop to buy wine for anyone, and found yourself lost in the choice of different wines ? My tactic is simple , just pick the wine that is almost sold out ( the one that everyone else took ). It's guaranteed to be the best ( or at least : a very good ) wine. If you transpose this onto the car market, you'll find that Toyota is a winner. Not by a mile, only marginally more than the others, but still there are clearly more Toyota's on the road here than anything else. ( about 20% of the cars on the road here is a Toyota ). So that choice was made : We will buy a white Toyota. But what make ?

We went to the Toyota dealership and asked if we could test drive their models. To our surprise, they had EVERY possible car available for test drive, and no fuss was made about driving one. You wanna drive a V6 400 horsepower truck, no worries. You'll need to sign a quick insurance waiver ( a A4 that basically tells you that you will be liable for a certain amount of damage if you crash, usually anything between 500 and 3500 dollars ). TIP : This can be an indicator for how good the dealership will be for you by looking at those numbers, the higher they are, the more scroogey they will be and the more expensive your car will be. So if they ask you to sign a waiver at 3500 at one dealership, and 1000 at the other ( for the same car mind you ) then you should try and talk to the dealership with the 1000 waivers.

We sat in a few different models : The Aygo, the Yaris, the Corolla and the RAV4. Anything beyond the RAV4 will cost you serious bucks and also costs a lot to drive ( 17 liters of petrol per 100 kilometers etc ). The Aygo and Yaris are way too small to even consider, if the potholes don't kill you a rampant road train certainly will. So Aygo and Yaris are a big no-no. The choice was really between a Corolla and a RAV4. In other words, the heart versus the head choice. The RAV4 obviously is a lot more expensive than the Corolla and will use more petrol, but then again the RAV4 fits the Australian lifestyle better ( remember : 50% of cars here are SUVs and the cars that aren't SUVs are the big commodores and Aureons with big V6s or V8s ). Compared to the "average" vehicle on the road, a 4cylinder RAV4 would be quite economical , a good trade-off between lifestyle and cheap and green driving. The RAV4's are very popular here , the corolla's are "the wife's car". Also when towing anything of reasonable length or weight ( a boat, a horse trailer, a big trailer for home renovations etc ), the Corolla would not be sufficient whereas a RAV4 would do a good job with ease.

So... we bought the Toyota RAV4 4cylinder !! It's an "Edge" model which includes a lot "dooblies" as the salespeople call them : Roof rails ( not racks, the rails look a lot better and are welded on the chassis and therefor can only be fitted at production of the car) , Luxury steering wheel ( hey , you're gonna be using that about all of the time in the car, it might as well have a good feel ! ), parking sensors in the back ( a little beep that tells you if you are driving back into something ) , tinted glass ( looks cool and IS cool = keeps a lot of heat out of the car ) , 17" alloy wheels, Air Conditioning , Cruise Control etc etc...
We added a Nudge Bar on the front ( like a bull bar but only the middle bit ) and a tow bar at the back ( for our boat trailer, one's gotta have dreams you know ! ) and an integrated SatNav on it since our little Garmin is dying.

All in all it's a super luxurious car that would cost about 50.000 euro's in The Netherlands and which we certainly would never have bought there. We paid a total of 40000 dollars for it : That's 20.000 euro's ! You can buy a second-hand Hyundai Getz with 200.000 mileage on it for that price in Europe, if you're lucky ! Ok , that was exaggerated, realistically you would be able to buy a new Hyundai Getz for that.

We're very happy with the deal, and it only took us two garages and lots of internet research to get this price. On the internet we saw a second-hand RAV4 from 2005 listed for 34900 ( didn't even bother looking at the mileage ) and in another Toyota dealership ( The Toyota dealer in Mango Hill, don't go there ! ) we got a quote of 50.000 for this car.

At Toyota Maroochidore ( good one, go here for good deals ! ) we got a good deal and he threw in a pair of "Bush-tucking lights" on the nudge bar too ( these will cost you 500 dollars new mind you ) so we do some bush driving with it.

The only thing we couldn't get was a WHITE RAV4, which we initially set our mind to. The Edge model is a bit of a sold out model and only red / black / blue / graphite / metallic silver were available. We took the graphite one, it looks real good with the black tinted windows and the nudge bar and roof rails. We actually tested the white versus black car theory by sitting in cars that had been standing in the sun for hours outside the dealership. First we sat in a black car : HOT ! Then we sat in a white car : JUST AS HOT ! No difference at all , apparently it's the interior ( which usually is black ) that attracts the heat more than anything else. So it wasn't a big issue and I must say that graphite grows on you. It's a bit like a light-black ( huh? ) metallic color. Some people call it "carbon" or "charcoal" but it's a bit lighter than that, it's a nice color and we are happy to have chosen it. It's also a metallic paint which in theory is a lot more expensive than the plain white paint.

We decided to fit some extra's in the car which will help protect it from the Queensland sun :
- An electronic rust protector
- UV window protection tint
- Paint protection
- Interior protection

Now whether or not those things work doesn't really matter, I've always been sceptical about it and never really thought they were much use. However, if you buy those items, you will get 10 years ( lifetime, but in reality it's 10 years ) warranty on your paint, your interior , rust. The window protection is also helpful because it will make your car glass darker which looks cool, and it will make it cooler inside when you first step in. Obviously there is no reason to have it past that because you have air conditioning anyway, but it also blocks some UV which is linked to cancer etc. The tinting is also an interesting one. The Queensland law says that all window tinting fitted by a dealer prior to delivery to the customer is street legal. So although we will have a very dark car it will be street legal anyway. There is 10 years warrantee on the tinting, so if there are any bubbles forming after installation ( due to sun, heat or whatever ) then they will fix it for us at no charge. Also , the resale value of the car will go up as will the trade-in. Everything together this cost 2000 AUD dollars but for 10 years warranty on literally everything in your car : You can't really go wrong. Also , I won't get mad when someone spills any coffee on our seats , because I know it will be fixed by the Toyota dealer.

Another great deal that Toyota offers is their 3-year fixed price servicing, which can be ( and we did ) lengthened by another 3 years, so 6 years. You will pay 300 dollars per year to service your car, no matter what's wrong with it : This is what you will pay for 6 years. This is well worth taking up , some other manufacturers also offer this so it's not unique to Toyota here, but it sure isn't the same in Europe. So that's 6 years service and warranty at a fixed price without worries. Good on ya, Toyota !

The average mileage of our RAV4 ( which we will pick up next week, just as our rental expires ) is 9.6/100 , the Corolla had a 7.6/100 so we're using 2 liters more per 100 kilometers. Seeing as the fuel over here is 1,10 dollars ( that's right : about 60 euro cents ! ) and doing 20.000 kilometers on average per year, it will cost us 440 dollars extra ( at current fuel prices ) to drive the RAV4 compared to the Corolla. The insurance ( full comprehensive, which means that if ANY damage is caused by ANYthing , you will be insured for it ) costs 550 dollars per year ( corrolla = 450 dollars ) and the "Reggo" ( taxes etc etc ) cost about 400 per year, about the same as the corolla ( it's calculated per cylinder not quite sure how exactly though, but both have equal cylinders = 4 ).

So, long story short : We'll pick up our new Toyota RAV4 with lots of gadgets up next week ! We'll try and put some pictures up during the weekend. We're still very busy at the moment getting a rental, but that's a separate post.