Cars

My perception is that countries in the Far East are very safe and have low rates of crime, but trying to confirm this through Google is a fruitless exercise as there is so much contradictory information that none of it can be relied on. But wherever you are in the world there is one common denominator of moral values which can always be relied upon, and that is the perfidy of horse traders and their successors; used car dealers.

Having been city dwellers in Kazakhstan for 9 months, and in China for the 3 years before that, we have not used a car other than for a few weeks of the year when back in New Zealand. So we resolved that we would get one to properly explore Malaysia and this has been my all consuming task for our week in Kuala Lumpur.

Left to her own devices Liz would get a brand new lease car which would probably be a nasty little locally produced Proton or Perodua; given a free hand I would buy the cheapest and most interesting wreck I could find, like most of the 40 odd cars that I, or Liz and I have owned, most of which ended their days with us.

She agreed that we buy a big old Mercedes Benz as long as it was shiny and looked smart; I would have preferred something ready dented but this seemed a fair compromise. Every used car in Malaysia has been owned from new by a little old lady who only ever drove to church or the mosque. I quickly discovered that I could not believe all I was told. An advertised 1997 model I looked at was built in 1992 (imported in 1997) and I wasn't allowed to test drive it until we had negotiated an agreed price. I saw an immaculate 1980 car that had only done 34,000 km which seemed too good to be true, especially when I found the service record in the glove box which showed that it had had a 55,000 km service 30 years ago.

Test driving these cars I felt that even the 6 cylinder models seemed a bit dull to drive and the best was the first I looked at; a 1990 3.2 litre model. But then I discovered that the annual road tax increases exponentially with the size of the engine. This car would cost ten times as much to tax as one with half its cubic capacity. I wanted Liz to come and see it as I felt that her approval would mean that it would not be entirely my fault if it were to fall apart before we got it home, but she didn't have the time and said that I would have to make the decision on my own.

So I bought an Alfa Romeo.