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Bolivia is awash with contraband cars from Japan
- wikidani 5y agoI wonder if they have JDM meetups in there
- devoutsalsa 5y agoBe careful not to blow the weld on the intake manifold.
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.ph/krafQ https://archive.ph/krafQ
- mrlonglong 5y agoI thought Bolivia drives on the right? It doesn't make sense to have right hand drive cars on the roads in a country that drives on the right?
- vlovich123 5y agoAnswered in the article > Mechanics fix suspension wrecked by the drive over the mountains from Chile; others move steering wheels from right to left.
- bombcar 5y agoMoving a steering wheel seems like it would be more trouble than it’s worth, but I’ve not actually taken apart a Japanese car to see if the holes and mounting spots are all there.
- ComputerGuru 5y agoThese are countries where parts are expensive and labor is dirt cheap. The economics (of everything) work out vastly differently. It’s hard to imagine how different life is in countries like that without either living there or using a time machine.
- ruined 5y agopretty much every modern car was designed with both versions in mind. many cheaper cars have agnostic dashboards that don't take much to convert. and any globally distributed model is going to at least have a secondhand market where the parts for conversion are readily available. for some popular models where OEM dashes are hard to come by, there are full dashboard kits produced by third parties.
- fomine3 5y agoThere are still some JDM models like minivan, K-car so I expect some cars are hard to modify.
- ehnto 5y agoYou would still have to solve a lot of other issues, it's usually a huge process. You'd need to import a correct-side dashboard ensemble, a correct side drivers door card and electronics panel, sometimes move your master cylinders across, get a different sided steering rack.. etc. Wiring harness may not even match up for different sided cars. There's a lot of parts you would need, and I'm not sure what types of cars they're bringing in, but JDM parts are getting harder to find.
- pseingatl 5y agoThe chutos I've been in have had only the steering wheels and pedals moved, the rest of the dash stayed where it was originally manufactured.
- bombcar 5y agoIt sounds like moving the controls is more about making it not obviously a chuto and less about drivability though the dash may be less needed than thought.
- netsharc 5y agoSince they're affordable and you can still use them as cars on the road, it makes "sense". Just the little issues like extra difficulty when overtaking. The further east you go in Russia the more you see RHD Japanese second hand cars.
- el-salvador 5y agoThere are some places where the wheel and driving side don't match what's usually expected. Like Vladivostok, Russia, where cars drive right but due to its proximity to Japan some cars have the wheel on the right. Or the U.S. Virgin Islands, which drives left, but most cars are U.S. imports and have the wheel on the left.
- ComputerGuru 5y agoOr USPS vehicles in mainland USA which have the steering column on the right!
- Zircom 5y agoYeah but they're built like that by design to make it easy for post workers to stuff mailboxes, not a quirk of location and ease of importation like the other examples.
- AdrianB1 5y agoMost of the road cleaning vehicles in Europe have the driver on the right side of the car, but that is a clear exception.
- pseingatl 5y agoOr Myanmar, but things there are changing. Previously they drove on the left as in the UK. Then a fortune teller told the dictator to change to drive on the right, but the imported cars still had the steering wheels on the right. With the penultimate government, this was starting to change. There's a new government now, so who knows? I've driven in a Bolivian chuto. The steering wheel and pedals are moved, but everything else stays where it was manufactured. It's odd to sit in the right sea as a passenger in front of a dashboard with no steering wheel.
- netsharc 5y agoTop Gear covered the dictatorial madness in Myanmar: https://youtu.be/9MDzTw7rHhE?list=PLWpVvJ8o7wzzTMdDpFCbxClHex6IjgETd https://youtu.be/9MDzTw7rHhE?list=PLWpVvJ8o7wzzTMdDpFCbxClHe...
- sandworm101 5y agoThe irony is that Bolivia is a hotspot for lithium production. I love the diconnect. A country to poor to effectively control the import of illegal used cars, where cops can be bought off for 100$, is producting lithium for electric vehicles sold in the richest.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ycombinete 5y agoThis must be one of the most common ironies in the world. It’s the story of most extractive developing economies
- bojan 5y agoIt's not that odd. Producing lithium is horrible for the environment, and places like Bolivia don't care very much if you don't (fully) adhere to environmental laws.
- qiskit 5y ago> The irony is that Bolivia is a hotspot for lithium production. It's why there was a coup in bolivia a few years ago. Guess who was involved in that one? Hint, the same one involved in coups in ukraine, venezuela, iran, etc. Discovering major resources is both a blessing and a curse. It can generate wealth/development. It also brings in bullies who want to steal your wealth/resource. Hopefully bolivia can buck the trend and use their resource for the good of their nation.
- scythe 5y agoBolivia is not a hotspot for lithium production. In fact, lithium doesn't rank among Bolivian exports at all. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bolivia_Product_Exports_(2019).svg#mw-jump-to-license https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bolivia_Product_Ex... Bolivia has extensive lithium resources which are known to be economically viable, but development of those resources is still largely hypothetical, though a few small production facilities have opened in the last decade.
- speed_spread 5y agoI wanted to listen to some of that "chutocumbia" but Youtube has nothing and searching for it only returns the article itself. I imagine it as some Miami Bass hybrid with Pan Flute leads and rapped blues lyrics.
- flobosg 5y agoYou might have better luck searching for “cumbia chutero”. > I imagine it as some Miami Bass hybrid with Pan Flute leads and rapped blues lyrics. It’s mostly cumbia with chutero-related lyrics, similar to Mexican narcocorridos.
- kragen 5y agoThanks for the recommendation! But all I'm getting is covers of Chutero yo soy by different bands?
- flobosg 5y agoI guess you’re right. “Chutero yo soy” seems to be kind of a chutero anthem, but digging a bit deeper in some of the YouTube channels I found a few more songs: El chutero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSfzIS1J6Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSfzIS1J6Xs El chutero (a different one): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoIz7SM8rUI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoIz7SM8rUI Hombre de riesgo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIYmC_C5-aw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIYmC_C5-aw
- kragen 5y agoThanks! Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I find this stuff a lot more listenable than Wachiturros or even Damas Gratis.
- scythe 5y agoThis is a good example where import controls are obviously silly. Is Bolivia (pop 11M) going to have a domestic car industry? Does it make any sense to ship the raw materials for building a car 4000 meters up in the Andes instead of just shipping the car?
- smnrchrds 5y agoProbably not, but not because of the population. Sweden's population is smaller (10.3 million) and yet it is home to Volvo and Scania.
- oblio 5y agoYeah, but Sweden industralized a century and a half ago.
- scythe 5y agoBolivia's population has increased sharply recently, while Sweden's has been growing much slower if at all. So historically Sweden doesn't look so small, and they share (somewhat) a labor and goods market with Germany, which has a huge domestic car industry and correspondingly offers the goods and services that car manufacturers need, and Denmark nearby, with shipping on the Baltic offering multiple excellent ports. Historically, in 1950 you have Sweden at 7M and Bolivia at 2.7M. Sweden is an outlier among small countries with its car industry thanks to all of these factors. Additionally, while not all of Bolivia is mountainous, the sweltering tropical climate of the lowlands is not exactly germane to physical toiling in a factory building all day. And my point about labor resources includes diversion from other more worthy applications of the abilities of Bolivia's engineers: its domestic infrastructure (power/transport/water) is lacking and you can't import that. Sweden has had a long time to build a power grid and rail system and enjoys less challenging geography.
- yborg 5y agoI assume it's as a source of tax revenue, not to protect a domestic car industry. The assumption is that in a very poor country these import duties fall on those able to afford them. But people want to roll...
- rvr_ 5y agoBolivia is also a huge market for cars stolen in Brazil.
- bombcar 5y agoI’m more interested in the picture - it appears to be a merchant with toy cars and … stacks of toy? counterfeit? Money?
- lccarrasco 5y agoThey're used as gifts for abundance in our festival called Alasitas, you can read more about it in the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alasitas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alasitas
- kragen 5y agoI'd always wondered about this but never thought to ask!
- sergiotapia 5y agoIt's for the alasitas where toys and miniatures of everything you can think of are sold. Even tiny bricks and cement bags! I have fond memories of going to them when I was younger. I named my open source project ekeko based on the alasitas. I'm bolivian
- jtsnow 5y agoNation Geographic's Trafficked has a fascinating episode on the stolen car market. The episode follows cars that are shipped out of the port of New Jersey to Ghana and documents just how organized the operations are. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/shows/trafficked-with-mariana-van-zeller/episode-guide/season-02/episode-07-stolen-cars/vdka25918459 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/shows/trafficked-with-...
- vishnugupta 5y agoI read a story on an auto enthusiasts forum. A guy had his Tesla totaled in the US. He claimed insurance etc and disposed it off. And then out of curiosity he opened Tesla’s app and was able to follow the car all the way across the Atlantic to Czechoslovakia before the car was deregisteted.
- Tade0 5y agoFYI Czechoslovakia ceased to exist in 1992.
- ngc248 5y agoIt traveled back in time then, must be a new beta feature :)
- stickfigure 5y agoAh hah! That explains why the cybertruck is raw stainless steel.
- vishnugupta 5y agoDart, sorry. I should have said Czech Republic :-).
- unmole 5y agoI feel obligated to point out that the preferred name is Czechia.
- spike021 5y agoI wish I had a good source, but from what I've seen firsthand (well, by following the Japanese car community and having friends in it) there's a pretty large export market for stolen cars. Either the full car is exported or people literally chop off things like front bumpers for popular cars, remove special limited parts, etc. There's probably some Japanese car website with actual numbers, but it can be unnerving when some of these are caught, and more so when I see new ones being reported. one relevant news article: https://jalopnik.com/facebook-group-catches-american-shop-that-sure-seems-to-1843862325 https://jalopnik.com/facebook-group-catches-american-shop-th...
- kragen 5y agoDoesn't Japan also require you to junk your car after two years or pay an arm and a leg for a yearly pollution inspection? If that's true, that's probably a much bigger stream of profitably exportable cars than theft.
- ehnto 5y agoIt's not that bad, every year you must take all cars through the Shaken ( 車検 ) process. It's exhaustive but they also help you resolve some issues at the Shaken workshop so it's not like they are antagonists unlike in some other country's roadworthiness processes. The rules aren't outrageous, and modified cars can make it through. It's certainly less strict than where I live in Australia. There is also no requirement to junk your car, if you can't be bothered with getting a particular car through Shaken anymore, you can still sell it to someone who will.
- kragen 5y agoThank you! Is there some carveout that makes sha-ken less rigorous or expensive the first couple of years, or was I just totally wrong about that? How much does it cost later on?
- ehnto 5y agoA new car only needs shaken after the first three years, which gives you a brief respite from cost and time it takes to go through the process, last I checked it was close to $500USD (which includes vehicle weight tax/insurance). In practice it also get's more expensive the longer a vehicle is on the road, because mechanic work is expensive in Japan and to continue meeting the requirements you'd end up spending money on maintenance. I think those are the two key factors that encourage people to keep buying new vehicles, but I might be missing something!
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y agoCountries like bolivia, and other countries that slap very large (>50%) import duties on foreign-made cars, have a very funny side-effect. Every 4 years it seems there is a model or brand that is cool, and that every elite seems to be driving. Is that the cool new car? The "in" brand. No. The cause is simple. Its 101 economics: Import duties are usually managed on a country-by-country basis. Politicians will manage capital flight ("trade imbalance") by seeking higher levies on heavy industrial goods that are popular, like cars. Those levies lead to a situation where everyone seems to be driving the exact same brand new cars (and usually 1 particular make). However, its not that the brand is particularly popular, its only that the car maker offers the best value net of import duties, plus, importers are very wary of bringing cars with huge import fees. So, the newer cars are always a few specific never-seen brands or makes. Then there are others driving slightly-older Y brand cars, far more generic. The oldest cars seem to have a lot of diversity and would resemble your average US used car sales lot. The evolution of the duties can then be described as follows: 1) free market: very low cost to import any car 2) Some tough -but not insane- duties (particularly on US new cars). 3) Restriction / heavy levies on used car imports. 3) Very heavy import duties on most western new cars (vs Indian or Chinese makes).
- mrtksn 5y agoThat's interesting but Turkey has found a solution to the problem. Having one of the highest tax rates in the World[0], the country had to be creative, thus invented the "Special Consumption tax" or SCT , which is determined by the size of the engine and price bracket of the car. When you buy a car in Turkey, on top of the import duties(if any) a SCT is added(anywhere from %45 to %150), on top of that a VAT is added(yes, VAT is calculated over the final price with SCT), on top of that other smaller taxes are also added(radio tax, stamp tax etc) and you end up with ridiculously expensive cars and you have no way out because you can't drive an unregistered car and you can't register your car without paying everything you have to pay. Also, the used car imports are tightly controlled to prevent undercutting the local market, to the point that it doesn't make any sense to import. Bringing your car from a neighbouring country is something you can do but for most it doesn't work out because you are limited to 2 years(it was 6 months till a few years ago). This also inflates the second hand market, often making cars an investment because they barely loose value. Once you buy a car you are in the club now, you drive it for a year or two then sell it at a high price, put a bit more of your savings on top of it and buy yourself even better car. [0] https://jalopnik.com/why-this-150-000-porsche-costs-600-000-in-turkey-1847572799 https://jalopnik.com/why-this-150-000-porsche-costs-600-000-...
- hoesephgerrible 5y agoIt's interesting to see the diversity/lack thereof in South American countries when it comes to availability of automobiles (Lots of classic Ford trucks functionally operational, a nice quirk of history). Perhaps population size and geography play a role, but does it really matter at all, trivial, even - at such high altitudes.
- throaway2818123 5y agoAre you assuming Bolivia = South America or do you have experience in other countries? I haven't been to Bolivia, but here in Chile (and other countries I've visited in South America) your statement isn't true.
- gruez 5y ago>Mechanics fix suspension wrecked by the drive over the mountains from Chile How bad can the roads possibility be, that a one way drive "wrecks" the suspension?
- Xunxi 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6kYJhvey5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6kYJhvey5Y