You’re moving to Costa Rica. Do you bring your car with you or buy one here? For people planning their move this is perhaps one of the most frequently argued topics.

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The resulting confusion is compounded by the wealth of out-of-date, misguided, and just plain wrong information you read, written by people who are simply recycling the out-of-date, misguided, and just plain wrong information they read somewhere else. Usually these folks have shipped only one car ever – their own – probably without professional help. No wonder they’re confused!

Over the next few weeks we are going to address all aspects of “Ex-pat Cars” and you’ll finally have a source for accurate information. You’ll have confidence in your decision because you’ll know the FACTS that come from the people who deal day in and day out with ex-pat cars.

So, the question remains. Do you bring your car or buy one here? We’ll add our opinion to the one expressed by Robert Evans in his very informative article. Should you buy a used car here? NO, NO, NO! And when you read all that other nonsense found elsewhere on the web and find yourself thinking you should buy a car here in Costa Rica, just repeat to yourself, “Don’t do it!”

Okay, there might be the rarest of situations when you will want to buy a car here. But these times are so rare that you can safely presume that that situation is not likely to apply to you. How can this be, when almost everything you read tells you to buy a car here? It’s simple. They’re just wrong – the associations you look to for guidance, the websites giving you the “real” information about Costa Rica.

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Probably the most often cited reason not to ship a car is that you’ll pay high import duties when it is registered here, and that is absolutely true. There is a sliding scale ranging from 53% of the value of your car if it is new-to-3-years-old to 79% if the car is over 5 years old. The fallacy, however, in using this high duty as a rationale for buying a car here is that, in effect, ALL cars here in Costa Rica are subject to high import tax, whether brought in new, or by a used car dealer, or another previous ex-pat.

So any time you buy a car here you are paying that duty because it has been built into the sale price of the car. It’s a simple fact, so stop worrying about the duty. It’s a fact of life and is part of EVERY car you will deal with here in Costa Rica, whether you bring it yourself or buy it here.

If you buy a used car here you’ll face two possibilities. One is that it was a car originally imported by a dealer for sale as a new car. The other, and far more likely, is that it was bought in the U.S. as junk and “fixed up” here for sale.

We’re not using the term junk casually. We’re referring to actual cars that were wrecked and usually written off by the insurance company as a “total loss” then sold for scrap and parts. Instead of being used for scrap and parts, however, they were shipped to Costa Rica and – sporting a shiny new paint job – are filling the used car lots.

Think we’re kidding? Look at the photographs. These are just a few of the cars that fill the bonded warehouses all around the country. They can legally stay in the warehouse for up to one year before being nationalized – and paying the duty – so they’re shipped in by the hundreds and sit in the lot until the body shops have room to take them.

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Body work is cheap here. So even after making the repairs and paying the duty there’s still a hefty potential profit margin for the dealer. And remember the cars were bought for next to nothing and shipped here, sometimes stacked up to six in a container. After all, they were already so crunched up that it didn’t matter if they banged around against each other a little more.

When cars are this extensively damaged, they might be fixed up to look normal, but there will almost always be problems. Things just don’t fit tight anymore. Pieces that are not so badly damaged to need replacing will be stretched and pulled and filled with body putty and painted. What looks shiny and new on the outside is really damaged goods on the inside, with bent frames, torqued struts, wrenched hinges, and on and on.

The cars damaged in Katrina literally flooded the market in the first months after the hurricane. And while most of those cars may be off the dealers’ lots and out on the road by now, they’ll be turning up for sale again and again for years. Is that really the car you want to buy here in Costa Rica?

Even if the car wasn’t wrecked, you are almost guaranteed that the odometer has been rolled back. Robert Evans’ excellent article tells of his experience trying to find a good used car here in Costa Rica. After ruling out all the cars that had obviously been patched up for re-sale, he checked out 26 cars that appeared to meet his needs. Of those 26, only ONE had an honest odometer reading. The rest all had verifiable rollbacks – nearly half of those by over 50,000 and one by 144,000 miles!

Okay, you say, “I won’t buy a car that originated in the United States.” In fact, one of the arguments frequently made against bringing your car with you is the fact that the models here are often different than those in North America, suggesting that this will work to your disadvantage when it comes to service work and parts availability. Hogwash!

While there can be a very small element of truth to this, it’s rare that it’s a substantial problem. (It is sometimes true that parts – particularly for American-made cars – might be found less expensively in the U.S. and we occasionally hear of people who have friends or family buy the needed parts and ship them or bring them when visiting to save a few bucks.)

Lesser known, though, is the flip side of this fact: cars manufactured for sale here, even those that appear to be the same make and model, are NOT the same in some very critical ways. The North American safety standards that most “gringos” take for granted don’t apply here and cars manufactured for sale in Costa Rica are simply less well-built than their North American counterparts.

Just compare the curb weight of a popular small SUV built for sale in the U.S. (3,501 pounds) to the “same” model built to sell here (at 3,179 pounds). While 322 pounds might not sound like a lot, it’s about 10% of the total weight! It’s true of ALL cars built to sell here. Where did those extra pounds go?

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They were in the reinforced crash resistant side panels, the heavier bumpers and fenders, larger batteries, radiators, heavier duty windshield wiper motors and the like. What do those North American crash standards really mean? We know of one person here who was driving a Toyota sedan originally bought in North America. He had a fairly minor accident, rear-ended at modest speed by someone driving a Tico car. He drove off with his Toyota virtually untouched while the Tico car was destroyed, absolutely destroyed.

Those crash standards are designed to prevent an “unreasonable risk of crashes occurring” and protect against “unreasonable risk of death or injury in the event crashes do occur.” Are you sure you want to drive a car that is NOT built to that standard?

Is there ever a time when buying a used car here is a good choice? If you’re retired, a tinkerer, and really want a thirty-year old Land Cruiser and don’t mind that it’ll need some kind of repair work every few weeks then, yes, you should buy a car here. There are thousands of those cars on the road here and at any given moment dozens for sale. Knock yourself out.

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For the rest of you, just remember our advice. “Don’t do it.” And if you do buy a car here, do us a favor and don’t tell us about it! It’s just too painful.

As a final note, in the interest of full disclosure, we think it’s important to address the following. Here at Ship Costa Rica, we are in the business of shipping household goods and cars. Yes, cars. So it might be easy to discount our advice by saying, “Oh sure you say to ship a car, you’ll make money when we ship a car.”

However, when you get to know us – or talk with any of our many satisfied clients – you’ll know that the overwhelming majority of our business comes from referrals, and we wouldn’t have those if our clients felt that we had steered them wrong about this. We have never yet had one of them regret bringing their car. We imported about a hundred vehicles last year and not one of them was smashed, salvaged, or flooded.

So with that out of the way, let’s look at what’s coming up. In the next few weeks we’re going to answer all your questions and tell you about:

  1. Bringing your U.S. car, new or old.
  2. Shipping your car in a container or by itself.
  3. The ins and outs of the tourist permit option.
  4. Passing the mysterious RTV (Riteve) inspection.
  5. Nationalizing your car and what comes next?

So stay tuned and keep reading…

Written by Barry Wilson and Arden Brink

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