Hi Scotty,
Love your show 🙂
My mother-in-law recently moved from Haiti to NYC to us.
In Haiti she still has her Daihatsu Terios 4WD from 2008 with manual transmission with very low mileage (probably 20k miles max).
She bought the car new in 2008 and serviced it always on time. No issues at all, no rust either. She likes the car a lot.
Would you either ship the car from Haiti to NYC for around 2,500$ or sell it for 5,000$ on the island and buy a used Toyota in NYC with that money?
I have found a great mechanic here in NYC by the way 🙂
Thanks in advance for your feedback.
You are the best.
Stan
This is a tough one. I am going to think out loud.
All things being equal, I’d ship it. Better the car you know. And Dahaitsu is owned by Toyota, so the projected reliability is good.
With that said, there aren’t too many Dahaitsu’s in the US, and come time to fix or maintain the car, it might be hard to find parts.
I recommend taking inventory of the expected costs for maintenance and repairs, and see if parts are available.
If parts are available in the US, or you can get parts at a reasonable price, ship it.
If parts are hard to come by, sell it, and out it towards a Toyota or Honda when you get to the US.
That car is awesome could easily last you over 200,000 miles.
tbh even where I live (there are plenty of dihatsu cars here) you always get parts for it using eBay…
the question is really if you can register that car is the US as it does not fall under the “25 year rule”
I would not ship that car to the United States. Shipping car exports to the US is going to be a pain. It would be better to sell it.
The feds won't let you import a vehicle that is not compliant with U.S. regulations unless it is at least 25 years old.
