HONG KONG: If you’re wondering about the best place in the world to buy a car right now, just look at Hong Kong.
“This is really unprecedented,” said Thomas Siu of Vin’s Motors, a used-car dealer in the city’s North Point district. “There are just too many cars to offload.” One popular destination for people leaving Hong Kong is Singapore, where the cost of owning a car continues to rise. The government in the island-state keeps tight control over the number of vehicles on the roads, requiring residents to buy special permits just to be able to drive. The price of those permits hit a fresh record in March, and the overall cost of private transportation was up 18 per cent in February, according to SGCarMart.com.
“I’m a bit of a car aficionado, and have bought and sold many cars in my life, always securing good deals,” Foucault said. “It’s hard to accept that I have to sell this car at a such a lower price.” “I didn’t have a luxury car, so I didn’t mind,” she said. “Prices dropped so much that my car wasn’t worth much anymore anyway.”