We have been shopping for a car here in Bogota, though the terrible traffic was the number one thing we were mostly warned about before moving here. (In Bogota, like in other big cities like Mexico City, they have the system of "pico y placa" where you can only drive your car every other work day - where the weekend is a free for all for everyone to drive as they wish. The unintended result of this law was that people just bought more cars that had license plates with the other alternating number scheme!) The public transportation here is not so great I have been told - by our housekeeper (empleada) and nanny (ninera) - where they each travel on the buses and the Transmilenio between 1-2.5 hours one way each day to get to us!
There are many dealerships that have worked with colleagues from my husband's international organization or with the many diplomats in Bogota in the past, as we are the capital city where all the embassies are. The dealerships know about all the paperwork and you simply have to choose a car that is valued with your "cupo" limit. For example, at my husband's professional level, he is allowed to import a car at a value of $30,000USD (but not even a penny more). If he were at the director level, his "cupo" would be up to $50,000USD limit.
During our first trip here, we went to visit the Honda and Toyota dealership, but were not especially impressed. They were still the same cars available in the US and the prices were reasonably high. We decided on a Volvo XC60 T6 which has a special price for diplomaticos. There is only one Volvo dealership in Bogota and with the general Volvo vibe is that they are not aggressively trying to sell their cars to you. They believe those that want and respect the brand will come to them. They are happy with their yearly sales of around 900 cars. This is one of the main reason that we wanted a Volvo, that there are very few of them so the demand would be extremely low if it were stolen and resold for parts. [We additionally will have diplomatic plates - blue ones with the letters "IO" for "international Organization (and not CP which stands for "cuerpo diplomatico") - and we are told that these are highly respected and car thieves won't even bother with trying to steal them.]
Though the car is valued at more than the cupo, we will pay the remaining balance apart from this.
Below is the actual price and payment plan-timeline for the car, as of the end of 2013. After getting officially the diplomatic status and also making the first payment (must be from a Colombian bank account due to the domestic terrorism rules), we expect to get the car in January, 3-months later due to the Christmas holidays.
[Update - late Oct 2013: We just received our bank account from Citibank and are now waiting for our official "diplomatic" status, and from that point, we will be able to start the paperwork in order to get the car out the "zona franca" and into our hands! We may even get the car earlier - in December! We can't wait!]
Hope that makes your car selection choices easier,
Avila
No comments:
Post a Comment