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Well, I think the OP is looking to be up around Waimea and most of that part of the island has paved roads to most of the houses. If he's just gonna use it to go to town (Waimea, Hilo or Kailua-Kona) and gather groceries, it should do fine. I've seen a couple of them and some of those new mini-coopers running around in Waimea. There's also some other types of little electric cars wandering around Waimea and Honokaa. If he wants to go off road, then there's always horses up in cowboy country.
Still, just about anywhere on the island, there are probably just as many pick up trucks as there are passenger cars and a lot of the passenger cars are either 4WD or AWD.
Different strokes... but if I was buying a car in Waimea, I'd want to buy through a dealer on the BI to avoid the hassle and expense of having to barge my car somewhere else.
Think about it. Let's say something goes wrong with the car. Call a tow truck, tow it down to Kona or Hilo, dealer fixes car, you pick up the car. Most times that's only going to take a day or two, unless they have to get a part shipped in.
Versus, call a tow truck, tow it down to the dock, wait for it to get loaded on a barge, the barge goes to wherever, gets unloaded, goes to dealer, gets repaired, goes to dock, waits to get loaded on barge, sails back to BI, gets unloaded, you pick it up. That sounds to me like a week minimum, with $250 in barge fees under the new rates.
And you're going to go through that for every periodic service even if it doesn't break. So every 10,000 miles or 15 or whatever the warranty service interval is, you're without a car for a week and paying another $250 on top of the service cost. Not to mention the hassle. TO ME, that doesn't make sense.
And for what? Just to have a different car than everyone else has? In a remote location where everything has to be shipped in from elsewhere, the winning strategy is to go with a vehicle that is popular and for which local parts are readily available.
Case in point, I have a friend who drives a BMW Z-3. Great car, sexy, great ride. He's had it in the shop now for 3 weeks, waiting for the right parts to come in. They shipped in parts from San Fran, wrong parts, try again. It's now become a major hassle for him. He still has to go to work, etc. So he's got a car rental on top of his repair costs, and a lot of inconvenience. That's NOT sexy.
He's seriously wishing now he had a little more vanilla car. Add barging it to Oahu and back to the deal (and then what if it isn't right when he gets it back? You KNOW that happens) and he'd be ready to blow his brains out about now.
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