I was never a big fan of buying cars. I was thinking of using my families spare car as long as possible to avoid having a loan over my head. Its not that having a loan is bad, its just that I think cars in Malaysia are overpriced and I think it’s ridiculous to spend a big portion of your wages paying off a loan for the next 9 years.But recently I just had to surrender because my family’s spare car proved to be a pain to maintain. It manages to churn out a bill of thousands of Ringgit every 2-3 months due to repair costs. Not to mention a huge petrol bill, since it is a 2 litre car, with an old engine on top of that. So based on those calculations, I came to the conclusion that buying a new, small inexpensive car will be way better than maintaining the old car, although the old car has no monthly payments needed to be paid.

So to cut the story short, I went to the Perodua dealership and bought myself a Viva 850 manual, which costs around RM32000 (got a RM 2000 discount due to promotion). But actually even if it is not a promotion you can also ask for a discount from the dealer if you are good at talking. A portion of the car price goes to pay the commission of the salesman, so if you can manage to convince the salesman to lower his commission, you can get a discount. Take into account also the free gifts given. They might be useful and not worth sacrificing for a good discount.

Payment method

Did you know that some banks offer a repayment period of 10 years? But this is usually for degree holders and so far I heard only Bank Islam offers it. You might try asking the salesperson about it. However the interest rate usually is higher. I took a normal 9 year loan, which translates to RM365 of monthly repayment, but I chose not to pay the down payment and opt for a full loan. I usually won’t recommend it since the monthly repayment would be higher but I have my reasons. The main reason being as a business owner, my income is sometimes not fixed. So, to avoid defaulting, I would rather use the money that I would have paid for the down payment and pay my monthly payments in advance so that I have buffer time in case I’m not able to pay for the loan on a particular month.

Running costs

Since the car is a small car, its running costs are pretty small. You can go 100km for about RM11 worth of fuel or less if it’s a highway. However I’m a bit sceptic about the service costs. I mean the normal service costs are OK, but in the maintenance schedule there is an anti rust treatment that I have to do every year. I’m not sure how much that will cost or even it is actually necessary, but what I know is if I don’t do it, the warranty is void. I guess that’s a way they assure business for the service centre operators.

Conclusion

So far I’m happy with the car, despite some downsides in the luxury department (hey, its a cheap car, what do you expect). But it satisfies my requirement of getting from point A to B in as lower cost as possible, so I have no complaints .

iMyn