Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Used Cars



In America, the moment a new car is driven off the lot the value depreciates. Regardless of how many miles are on the car, if sold, it will always be a used car. In Vietnam, this is not the case. Cars, like memorabilia, often go up in value here. Yesterday one of my students told me that his father bought a Lexus SUV last year for $100,000 (this is with the 90% VAT tax for importing cars). The same car, one year later, is now worth $140,000!!!! Can you imagine buying a car in the US and having it go up in value $40,000!

I'm assuming this is the case because the people here can't get cars into the country fast enough. With the booming economy, many wealthy people are becoming very wealthy people and have nothing to spend their money on other than cars.

Meanwhile I'm just curious if my bicycle will go up in value when I sell it next year!

4 comments:

could it be mom said...

If you bring your bike home by April 1st, I'll give you a thousand bucks.

Anonymous said...

braggart student. I usually don't make trollish comments like these but I'm sure he's very proud of (what I presume to be) his commie official father's big bucks while the majority of the country starves

Unknown said...

Another possibility: Rampant inflation. 24% in 2009 according to some random website.

smart friend said...

the same thing does occasionally happen in the US with high end import cars. A year-old Audi R8 was going for $20,000 more than the sticker price last year because there were so few in the US, and a waiting list for a new one.