Your old guzzler is headed south of the border
If you thought trading in your old gas-guzzling car or truck for a shiny new hybrid or subcompact would help the planet by taking it off the road for good, you'd better think again. Shipping those old road warriors south to Mexico is now a big business. According to the Los Angeles Times, the armada of Detroit iron flooding across the border is large enough to sustain 25,000 families via the used car trade in Juarez City alone.
Because of high tariffs on used American cars, it used to be that that this was a rare practice. However, since trade barriers began dropping under NAFTA in the middle of 2005, the former black market trickle has been transforming into a legal-market tsunami. The influx of 3,000,000 cheap, used American cars in the past several years may be at least partially responsible for large dropoffs in Mexican new car sales, especially in the less costly subcompact class.
What can be done? The article notes that as the tariffs for more recent model years come down, those newer, more efficient vehicles will help displace some of the smoke-spewing heaps now steaming their way across the border. Somehow, that's not very comforting. Maybe we should be recycling some of these clunkers before they can continue to do their damage elsewhere.
[Source: Los Angeles Times]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Wildgoosechase73 5:20PM (2/25/2008)
These clunkers are still worth $6 to $10k, nobody is throwing that kinda money away. Maybe some evironmental organizations could shift money spent on lobbying towards buyinf and crushing SUV's?
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Mike Z 5:26PM (2/25/2008)
Excellent idea! Seems like a great idea, having environmental groups buy up old gas guzzlers.
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Some Dipshit 5:32PM (2/25/2008)
Cool Airstream!!!!!!!
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KarenRei 5:45PM (2/25/2008)
An old, discarded SUV shipped to Mexico seems likely to be a workhorse, not a status car. Nobody drives old cars as status vehicles unless they're classics or something, and Mexico has a lot more of a demand for work vehicles than urban tanks.
Anyways, as for cars in general, a 1990 model car replacing a 1970 model car in Mexico should be seen as a good thing, shouldn't it?
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1985 Gripen 5:54PM (2/25/2008)
This is nothing new. I live in L.A. and years ago (around 2000) we had Mexican guys walking around the neighborhood knocking on doors offering to buy old junker cars in the driveway. My wife had a really old POS Camry and they offered to buy it with cash on the spot. They would then turn around and sell them in Mexico for a profit.
When that car finally would no longer pass California emissions requirements and cost too much to make it comply, a salvage yard bought the car for $200 cash and towed it away. I understand they turn around and sell it in Mexico where there are no emissions laws.
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Carlos Ferreira 6:21PM (2/25/2008)
We get something like that here in Portugal. Because of high taxes, people will go to Germany and buy a 5 year old Audi, Merc, BMW or Volkswagen instead of a new car, 1 or 2 classes down. Doesn't sound really new, and I really endorse the idea that replacing a 1970 piece-of-junk with a 1990 somewhat-piece-of-junk is good in a way, and we all know that keeping an old car is, most of the times, better for the environment, since production costs (in pollution) are extremely hefty. So, no worries, eh?
Carlos Ferreira
http://www.greencarvalue.blogspot.com
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Wise Golden 6:29PM (2/25/2008)
I'm not so sure that this is as bad a thing as you believe it to be Dominick. American Vehicles, even those that are 10-15 years old are far cleaner than any other cars being produced or sold anywhere in the world, except our current cars sold in America. The EU just got on the bandwagon with it's cars a short while ago.
Last time I was in Mexico, I saw a lot of cars that apeared to be American in origin (english decals and models sold in the US,) and they were not that old -- maybe 5-10 years old. That's not necessarily a junker.
But here's the question of the day -- does Mexico use unleaded gasoline?
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rob 6:30PM (2/25/2008)
Can we work NAFTA the other way too, and IMPORT the low-consumption european diesels that are sold in Mexico but not the US?
I'd love, say, a Peugeot 206.
http://www.peugeot.com.mx/inform/Showrooms/src/flash.php?src_id=22928
Yeah, yeah... Emissions. I fail to see how a 60mpg diesel generates more net pollution than a 25mpg gasser.
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ryan 6:54PM (2/25/2008)
I buy all of my cars at auction. I do this not only because buying new cars is wasteful in any number of ways, but because you save a ton of money doing so. Case in point, I just picked up an '05 Prius for $6k. Selling today through private parties for $16-$20k. Anyways, my buyer is a Mexican guy who has literally achieved the American dream. He has tons of workies at his junkyard, probably most if not all illegals, that he uses to fix up cars which he then ships back to Mexico. Apparently there is a HUGE market for this. Enough that he is ready to retire from the business and head back south across the border to enjoy a life of luxury until the day he dies.
As Wise Golden commented though, you DO have to be careful with driving cars in Mexico. There are no real quality standards on gas, and I have heard stories of engines/catalytic converters going kaboom due to the gas being leaded, watered down, or any number of things that are unthinkable in America.
Like KarenRei says, most of these vehicles will be used as they were meant to be (or at least advertised to be). No soccer moms driving their kids to band practice. Just 10 guys filling up a 7-seat truck and heading out to the job site. Look at their per-person mileage, and there is NO comparison in the emissions that they produce when compared to an American.
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armmat 7:13PM (2/25/2008)
I never understood why poor wage Mexicans would want to drive complete piles of shit that costs them a fortune to run and maintain.
Their logic is absurd and utterly retarded.
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Wise Golden 9:41PM (2/25/2008)
Rob - I see what you're saying about how you fail to see how a 60 mpg car produces more emisions than a 25 mpg car, but believe me, there are a lot of circumstances where that is true. An American certified gas burner will be on the order of 20 times cleaner per gallon of fuel used than some of the products being sold in other areas of the world.
It doesn't seem intuitively correct, but that's how it goes. Recently, in the EU, they have started to make some cars that would pass our standards, but that's not what is being sold in Mexico, or China or India.
Frankly, if it were not for our EPA, Ford, GM and Chrysler might not even exist. It takes big companies with lots of know-how to get in compliance with our regulations. And we pay several thousand per car more to meet these regulations (and that's fine with me.)
Here is one way to illustrate the situation -- and I know this will sound really weird, but it does illustrate the situation. In the 70's, a person could kill themselves in a garage by running the engine with the door closed in under 4 minutes. A car built today would not likely kill a person in any amount of time unless the garage was sealed somehow, and even then it would take about 45 minutes. That really shows how much they have reduced the emisions in this country, and good for them. I like the idea of the new NASA cat. converter that is talked about on this site as a means of improving that pollution leval even further.
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Phil L. 8:00AM (2/26/2008)
armmat -
Because they're poor and live in a poor country and have no other choice.
And note that these older vehicles are often simpler - and cheapter - to maintain. Of course, I doubt such maintenance includes servicing the emissions or safety systems on a regular basis; more likely such components are removed the first time they cause a problem.
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MikeW 12:36PM (2/26/2008)
No, Mexico isn't a poor country. It is a corrupt country.
There are plenty of billionaires in Mexico.
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Derek 12:56PM (2/26/2008)
old vehicles are only unreliable if you neglect them and/or don't know how to do decent work on them. The newest vehicle I have ever owned is a 1992 and it is one of two cars I have had that are younger than I am. I have also never paid over $1000 for a car, yet I have never experienced the car problems that I hear from friends and acquaintances who have new cars.
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Bill 3:59PM (2/26/2008)
New cars in Mexico get slapped with the 15% federal tax (like VAT, hidden in the retail price), PLUS are assessed a hefty annual fee (tenencia?) for based on value for the first (IIRC) 10 years.
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Phil L. 12:50PM (3/03/2008)
Recently announced changes in Mexican used car importation laws:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gn2ydMf5dXaYX8UzRipDE-ylG2qQD8V5MLGO2
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