EDITOR – As any unemployed, stay at home Dad will know, the price of cars both used and new is on the up and up.
But at some point somebody has to stand up and say something about it.
It has gotten to a point where, here in Durban, the price of used cars is now absolutely absurd.
If you want a decent used car you are going to fork out at least R50,000 and that’s before the cost of insurance, licensing and maintenance. Why is it that we in South Africa must pay these huge prices when, in the rest of the world even in my current situation (I do scrap metal with a home-made cart), I would still be able to afford a mechanically sound, old banger that would save me the physical labour of pulling 100+kgs of scrap the 3kms to the scrap yard. It frustrates me to know that I could comfortably afford to run a car day to day, but at 34-years-old I still can’t buy one and maybe turn a milk and bread scrap business into something that might actually pay a few bills. Don’t take this letter as a self pity or a sob story letter – I am well aware that there are people with less than me. I simply want to ask all the car sellers out there to stop trying to get rich off one car. Bring back the days of cheap old cars that could lift a man back onto his feet.
Should this be published and on the off chance that there are readers out there with a old beat up bakkie in their back yards that isn’t used anymore, I would greatly appreciate tha use of it.
