Importing a car: Looking for others experiences

[DMC]

All the quoted problems with servicing badly designed vehicles are to do with the design of the vahicle. None are a result of importing a vehicle that isn't sold in Finland.

[Pursuivant]

Well who then got you into the mess if a) you don't get parts for the car unless you pay your ass off and b) you don't have anyone around able to fixing it but the dealership - except you yourself importing such a car? Bad design is just a cherry on top. I could import a Mahindra Jeep and the local guys would scratch their heads a while and fix it scavenging parts that may fit - actually in the old days thats what you did with any old car that was rarer or had no parts, a bit like they do in Cuba.

[raamv]

I could import a Mahindra Jeep and the local guys would scratch their heads a while and fix it scavenging parts that may fit - actually in the old days thats what you did with any old car that was rarer or had no parts, a bit like they do in Cuba.

They still do that outside ring III ...

[Pursuivant]

Still much easier to go to Hessumobiili and say "87 tojotaa takaiskarin puslat" Though I'm maybe getting lucky with my VW bug...

[DMC]

Well who then got you into the mess if a) you don't get parts for the car unless you pay your ass off and b) you don't have anyone around able to fixing it but the dealership - except you yourself importing such a car?

Parts can be more expensive for cars not sold here, but not necessarily. It can be cheaper to import parts even for cars that are sold here. I have occasionally sourced parts in the UK for people who didn't want to pay Finnish prices. Even going to a dealer in the UK, buying genuine parts, and posting them over here, I have made a profit selling the parts here.

If I import a car that is easy to work on and claimed that it was cheap to service because it is not sold in Finland, that would hardly make sense. If a manufacturer were to start selling a difficult-to-service car in Finland, that wouldn't miraculously make it cheap to service. The problems noted in earlier posts, such as having to move the engine to change the plugs, will be the same regardless of whether the car is sold in Finland or not.

[Pursuivant]

The Chrysler doesn't start after changing the battery. Or maybe it starts but it doesn't get any gasoline in the injection, I forget... Now as the stupids dealing with it they don't understand english, I don't remember what exactly it was saying but something about the door being open or something irrelevant that has nothing to do with driving and very clear "czech engin". So they took all the parts off, checked them, and I think they took the black box and theres nothing wrong with that either. I think cars with a computer should be banned.