Alex has been saving up for months now and looks set to finally purchase a brand new car. It hasn’t been easy considering the sacrifices he had to make just to save N3million in a year. Even after all the sacrifices and diligence, he still needs to get another N2million from his bank to complete the money. It hasn’t always been like this for Alex who over the years had relied on “tokunbo” cars for his daily commute.

Being a conservative guy, he never thought buying a new car was worth the fuss when he could simply get a car for half the price. Now that his status is changing, he feels the time has come to step up even though deep down his conviction tells him buying a new car probably isn’t worth it. He believes if not for the hype, he probably will just stick to his Tokunbo vehicles. “Brand new vehicles are not worth him” he says.

1) Expensive to maintain

Contrary to most opinions, Alex believes brand new cars are quite expensive to maintain. He recalled a friend telling him how he spent over N400, 000 just to fix a windscreen that was shattered. For most brand new cars, replacing parts can be very expensive leaving car owners with no choice but to pay. Four sets of shock absorbers can range between N100, 000 to N300, 000 for some cars. Contrast that to “Tokunbo” cars which are fairly cheaper to maintain.

2) Limited market for spare parts

Alex, follows up his claim of parts being expensive by alluding that our spare part market shops do not cater adequately for new cars compared to tokunbo vehicles. For example, parts for a made in 2014 car is harder to find compared to an older model of the car. This boxes inadvertently forces car owners into buying from the car sellers at a rate that can’t be appropriately negotiated.

3) Limited choice of service providers

Buying new cars also limits you to using one or two service provider. Typically, car owners are forced to this for reasons such as warranty benefits, free service, car parts, vehicle maintenance, specialty etc. This is different with tokunbo cars as you are inherently not bound to any service provider.

4) Warranties don’t go far enough

Brand new cars typically come with Warranties that last one year or 100,00km whichever comes first. Whilst that is the norm, he feels these are mostly just words backed up with little action. The other day a friend noticed the AC of his brand new car stopped working just 6 months after he purchased it. The car company fixed the AC free of charge only for the fault to develop again. They fixed it the second time and told him he had exhausted his warranties. When he discovered another factory fault he had no option but to pay from his pocket. There is also the issue of vehicle recalls that we get in the news, he believes it hardly applies to Nigeria.
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