Before I tell you about our ‘find’, I’d like to share some of my observations about the world of buying and selling cars. Over the last 23 years, I’ve bought and sold several hundreds of cars in the UK, and the scenario is always pretty much the same. When buying (privately), you buy  the local Autotrader, Exchange and Mart or Freeads papers, find an advert for something that sounds like a bargain, drive 100 miles in the rain to see it, only to find that it’s actually nothing like the owner said. I’ve lost count of the number of wasted journeys I’ve made in the past to see cars that were rarely anwhere as good as described. One particularly bad example I remember was a Peugeot 306 XRDT. I’d been looking for one for a customer, and saw this advert in Trader that sounded perfect – right colour, mileage and price. Now, the car was around 70 miles away and would have involved the M25, so to avoid wasting my time, I phoned the owner (who was a very respectable-sounding gentleman) and asked him a series of direct questions about the condition of the car.

I asked, “Does the bodywork have any rust or dents that you know about?”, to which he replied “No, it’s immaculate”. I asked him “Does it start, run and drive OK?”, and of course he told me it did. Having taken directions, I set off with an A-Z and a cash deposit in my pocket, ready to snap-up a bargain.

About an hour and a half later, I eventually found the owner’s house in a smart leafy suburb, and saw the car outside. At first glance, I noticed something not quite right. As I drove a little closer, I saw that the passenger side door mirror was hanging down the side of the door, and was just held there by the wiring loom. Not a good start, but if that was all that was wrong with it, I could haggle a bit off the price and get it fixed. Having parked the car, I noticed that the owner must have seen me arrive as he was walking out of the house towards me. We exchanged greetings and I began the usual ritual of walking slowly around the car, stopping short of actually kicking the tyres (I’ve never known why people do that!). It seemed like evey panel had a dent or a scratch of some sort, despite the owner’s description on the phone. Most could’ve been sorted-out fairly easily but that’s hardly the point. Anyway, as I’d come so far, I thought I might as well ‘go through the motions’ so I asked for the keys. A less-than-promising sign was that the remote central locking didn’t work so I unlocked it with the key. An attempt to start the engine was met with nothing but a ‘click click’ sound – it was obvious that the battery was completely flat! At this point, although tempted to give the seller a piece of my mind, I decided it wasn’t worth wasting my breath and so thanked him and left. I’m always speechless that someone that obviously wanted to sell their car could make absolutely NO effort whatsoever to prepare it for sale. As a minimum, it should at least start!

Anyway, so here in Paraguay, a search for some VW Kombi vans to buy resulted in a scan of the local newspaper classifieds, as well as a website for cars and vans for sale. After some phone calls, we’d found a few possibles and arranged to meet the owners. They’re generally quite happy to drive to your house to show their pride and joy, but as we were ‘out and about’ we met one in a local shopping centre car park, and another at a petrol station a few miles away. Both were similar 1992 VW Vans, made in Brazil and both described as ‘buen estado’ or even ‘impecable estado’! Both were white and equally awful. I was expecting bald tyres and frazzled brakes (we can cope with that) but steering that has 200mm of freeplay, floors that have rusted-through and had plates welded over the rust by what must have been a blind toddler, I wasn’t expecting. Working handbrake? No chance. In fact, neither had very much to commend them apart from the fact that they’d somehow managed to drive to the location under their own power!  Perhaps that’s what ‘buen estado’ means?

So, a call from a chap we regularly buy from said he had a rare and original 1978 Crewcab for sale. It was a lot more expensive than the others, but was well worth a look. The owner sent one of his staff to drive it to our house and he left it with us. Originally supplied new by the main VW dealer in Asuncion in 1978, its owner died a few years after and his widow put it into covered storage as she didnt want anyone else to drive it. It remained there for the next 24 years, until she too passed-away. The daughter then reluctantly sold it to the chap we bought it from. It really is a ‘timewarp’ vehicle and has only covered 50,000 miles from new. Apart from a new set of tyres and a quick service, it needed nothing and really drives like new. Apart from the lack of air conditioning, it’s been great fun to drive and I’ve done over 100 miles in it. On the way home fro the tyre centre, someone was shouting at me as I stopped at traffic lights. He was pointing at the car and after I’d realised what he was saying (my Spanish isn’t that good), it was clear he wanted to buy it! I told him ‘no thanks’ and carried on home, feeling very self conscious about driving what was obviously a very desirable vehicle amongst all the awful ones.

Paying for a large purchase like a car here can often be difficult as many people don’t have bank accounts. We can’t write them a cheque  or make a CHAPS transfer like in the UK. Our only option is to pay in cash, which we have to wire’ from the UK. There are currently around 7000 Guaranies to £1 sterling, so even a relatively modest sum of money means millions of Guaranies! That pile of money in the picture was mostly in 20,000 Guaranie notes (each worth around £3.50) and looks like a huge amount piled-up, like on Dragon’s Den. Sadly, I wasn’t a millionaire for long and probably won’t be again for a long time!

Now it’s ours, we’re having it shipped back to the UK next week (along with another we’ve bought) , and it should arrive in May sometime. It shouldn’t need much for the MOT either and we’ll certainly find it a new and appreciative owner when it’s all registered and taxed.

Driving around Asuncion in our air-conditioned Toyota with the windows up, there’s so many sights, sounds and smells of the city that you just don’t notice. In the old VW, with the windows all open in the hope of getting a tiny breeze to fight the stifling 40 degree heat, I find it a totally different experience. I’m bombarded on all sides by a barrage of noise, fumes, heat and unfamiliar sounds. There’s so many things I see that I want to take a photograph of, but can’t as I’m normally driving.

Whilst waiting for the tyre fitters to finish, I saw this man on a bicycle selling hot dogs! It was an amazing sight as he had everything on board to sell ‘Panchos’ including ketchup and mustard! The paraguayans are a  very enterprising lot and will find any kind of work to earn a living (there’s no ‘dole’ money here!) and this chap obviously decided that he would cycle up and down the road, selling hot dogs from his bicycle. I didn’t try one admittedly (for diet reasons!) but had to admire his spirit.

Anyway, it’s time I did something today, so it’s bye for now. I’ll be sure to post a bit more soon as there’s SO may things going on here that appeal to my ‘petrolhead’ nature.

Hasta pronto.