To Buy a car here or there?

Good night VIVirgin,

Welcome to the board. There are a ton of threads on this topic; do a search of the archives (make sure to set your search window to All instead of Last 30 Days).

You'll be spending a few thousand bucks and dealing with a lot of hassle to ship a vehicle and register it here from the U.S. Or, you can buy a cheap island car and then spend a few thousand bucks and a lot of hassle in getting it to work every time you want it to.

The real answer is, "it depends" -- on what you consider "cheap", on how much you know about cars, on what kind of hassles you prefer (bureaucratic vs. mechanical), on what makes you feel more secure.... these answers are different for everyone.

In shipping a car to St Thomas expect to spend at least $2,000.00 for transportation, and all of the taxes and registration fees, provided you make delivery to the shipper in the states and do your own processing in St Thomas. If you pay a "specialist" for help in the process expect a quantum leap in the expense. Bottom line, it doesn't make sense to send an "old" car from the states. If you're planning on moving to St Thomas I have two cars for sale which you might want to consider: http://sites.google.com/site/water-island-rocky-dock/Home/cars

Absolutely what fdr & rocky said.

I moved here in Jan & was hoping to not buy a car but it became a necessity. I ended up buying a car here, asking for a good mechanic's name with it. For a "beater" I paid $3500, then $200 to fix the 'bad' problems with it. It certainly gets me from point A to B but I know I still need to get more work done. Basically my mechanic said work doesn't get done on a car here until it NEEDS to be done, whereas in the States, I really did get my oiled changed every 3000 miles.

If you're willing to ship a beater, Please make sure someone here deals with your car (japanese, america, chinese, etc.) because it will be much more expensive to ship them/find a mechanic who will deal with the car. For example, I own a barnd-new Saturn back in the states that I would NEVER ship here. Not only would it beat the car up, there's no Saturn parts here (that I've been able to find)-yes, yes I've seen some Saturns here....but I'd never ship it here for $2000+ just to have to pay more for upkeep & parts.

And if rocky's willing to sell a car, just do a quick Carfax ($30 bucks!) and look into it!!