Day 244 - Our New Car

Image of a Ukrainian Tavria by order_242,
via Flickr.com

One of the first items on our personal agenda was to buy a car. The embassy had been in operation for six months by the time we got there, although it had been staffed by people on temporary duty until the ambassador, Susan and David, Becky, and then Alex and I arrived. We were the first staff to be assigned to Chișinau. The ambassador had had her Honda shipped from the U.S. David and Susan had shipped a VW Jetta to Moldova. We had sold both of our cars in Barbados (although the Nissan Stanza will reappear in our story) so we needed to find a car in Moldova.

We thought buying a local vehicle would mean fewer maintenance problems because someone in Moldova would know how to repair them. But locating one for sale wasn't simple. There weren't Lada or Zil dealerships on Stefan cel Mare Blvd or any other main street. Only the very wealthy and most powerful were seen in cars, and even many of them may have not owned cars but been driven around in government cars by government drivers. Buying a car meant we first had to find one someone owned and was willing to sell.

We weren't necessarily looking for a new car. A used one would have been fine. But finding any car was difficult enough. And then when we found one, a new Tavria made in the Ukraine, settling on a price was the challenge.

We had cash, and we expected cash to be a desirable means of exchange. That was not to be. Moldova was one big commodity exchange in those days. We asked how much the owner wanted for the car and the response was a certain number, not remembered, of pounds of concrete. We responded that we couldn't put our hands on concrete in those quantities, but we could pay in U.S. dollars. The owner countered with a number, again not remembered, of tons of newsprint. Again, we explained that we could not put our hands on rolls of newsprint in such quantities, but we could pay him 2,000 U.S. dollars. It sounds like a ridiculously small amount of money now, but remember that we had difficulty spending $4.00 on food our first weekend in the country. Eventually the owner agreed to accept cash, perhaps a bit more than we offered. He brought the Tavria to the embassy where Alex looked it over. Alex noticed there were no seat belts. The owner said that was no problem. He jumped into the Tavria and drove away. When he returned, there were seat belts, not installed, just lying on the backseat, ready for us to install them.

The local employees all referred to the Tavria as a town car. This does not mean it looked like one of those black Lincolns that drive the upper crust around Manhatten. It meant it should only be driven around town, and even that should not be undertaken until every nut and every bolt had been tightened to be sure it wouldn't fall apart.

During the two years we had the Tavria, we had not one bit of trouble with it. In contrast, David and Susan had frequent problems with their VW. They had brought with them spare oil and air filters, spare belts, and spare bulbs to minimize problems with maintaining it. I think they went through them all before they left. The official vehicles for the embassy were all American made which meant we had to have someone drive them to Kyiv, Bucharest, or even Vienna when they needed maintenance. Someone in Chișinau treated the American-made car of one of the other staff members who came later, Bob, as a source of spare parts. Each week Bob would discover something had been stole from it - the mirrors, the hood ornament, and even the front bumper. Our Tavria was a bargain in comparison.