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A new car

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By Helen Lee Gray
We were told that buying second hand car in Portugal is a bit of a mission. Dodgy dealers, lots of tax, changing your driving licences into Portuguese ones...the list goes on. What is common knowledge is the price of second hand cars, I mean my old metro could have been sold here for about £500 and anyone who knows my old car knows it ain't worth £500!

Our neighbour Jon, introduced us to Joao who runs a second hand car garage and repair shop in one of the towns locally. First great thing - he speaks perfect English, second great thing - any car he sells comes with a years guarantee, third great thing - his brother in law runs an insurance company and final great thing - he is prepared to find us a diesel car for our budget of 500 Euros!

Trouble is, it can take some time...a week later we get the call, he's found a Seat Ibiza converted car into two seater (cheaper here as the tax is lower on 'commercial cars'). It's a bit old, about 10 years old and needs some attention.

We tell Joao 'yes' and about three weeks later, once it is done up we have ourselves a car! Although it does take ALL day to get - things happen slowly here. Very slow sometimes. But 9 hours after we start to collect the car we have it in our posession!

It's black, OK maybe not great for the 35 degree heat, but lets ignore that. It's diesel which is about 40 cents cheaper a gallon than normal petrol!

Needless to say, I have not be allowed to drive it yet!

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