Cars Cost Less in Wetaskiwin, But Not Here

Finally, we are the proud owners of a pre-owned Peugeot 307 station wagon built by the Frenchies when they were not on vacation. It took 32 hours of website viewing, 23 hours of dealership tire kicking, 14 hours of phone calls, 9 hours of spreadsheet organization, 3 hours of test drives, 4 hours of mechanical inspections, and 1 CPR number to bring it all together. It's not easy when you have too many choices and too much time. 

Late model Peugeot with early model driver (both grey)

Cars are expensive here. Everyone tells you that: friends, dealers, insurance agents, kids on bikes. There is a massive tax on new cars here (180%)! If you wanted to purchase a new BMW 320i, it would cost you $94k CAD + taxes = $263k! No sneaking off to Germany to purchase one right from the Motor Works either; the tax is applied at registration. After that, there is a yearly "green tax" that you will pay based on the fuel consumption of your car. It could be as much as $2000 (or more) if you choose a bit of a guzzler. These high prices are reflected all the way down to the used cars, so you can expect to pay a lot more for a car here than you would back in the Land of Bitumen.

It sounds outrageous to pay this kind of taxation, but if you re-frame it, you are really talking about a "user pay" system that all fiscal conservatives love to love. An awful lot of your income tax goes to road repair and construction but we all own cars, so that is the expectation. There are neighbourhoods in Copenhagen that have 18% car ownership. They want their taxes going to mass transit and bike lanes. If you can afford a car here, you can afford the user-pay tax. There are arguments to raise the taxes even higher to reduce car ownership. Rush hour is a real gong-show in Copenhagen.

Fuel costs about $2.30 CAD per litre and $2.00 CAD per litre for diesel. Since diesels get better mileage (more energy per litre), we bought a diesel. Diesels are not fond of short daily trips, but I think we will blow out the soot by ripping shitters in the high school parking lot. 

Since people pay such a high price for a new car, they REALLY take care of them. We looked at cars with more than 250,000 km that looked like they just rolled off the showroom floor. Heaven forbid if you have ash residue in the ashtray or cigarette lighter! No way I'm buying that run-down piece of crap. I'm going to have to protect our car's interior by layering it with garbage and pop bottles. I can't risk the depreciation.