So You Want to Drive?

Buying a Car in Moscow
We arrived in Moscow in September 2002. We soon realized that, although the metro was convenient and cheap, we needed a car to get our kids to school and to accomplish weekly essentials such as shopping and church. We hired a driver who started driving his own car. The driver, Kostya, turned out to be a good find (friendly, reliable, still a good friend to this day). However his Russian model car smelled strongly of gasoline, had no way to filter the outside air and seemed to break down at inconvenient times and in inconvenient places. One morning the car broke down on the middle of Leningradsky Prospect, one of Moscow's main roads. Kostya had to abandon the car in the middle of the road and flagged a cab to get the kids to school. So after some hand-wringing, we set out on our first real adventure--to buy a car. Little did we know what awaited us.

Odometers
After canvassing the Russian used car markets, we came to believe that Russian used car salesmen make US used car salesmen look like boy scouts. We checked the histories of several US model used cars online (CarFax and similar services) to compare mileage and check for accidents. Without exception the odomoters had all been turned back so that the odomoter reading was 50-100% less than actual mileage. At one market Josie confronted a salesman after he admitted the odomoter reading may be a bit understated, asking him how he could justify such blatant dishonesty. He said "You know, this is Russia and people here like to believe that things are better than they really are. So actually we are doing people a favor."

The Test Drive
We realized that we did not have the risk tolerance to buy a used car in Moscow and proceeded to look for a new car. At a Rolf dealership we fell in love with a Mitsubishi Carisma (OK, it was the cheapest Japanese-made car we could find in Moscow). The salesman asked if we wanted to take a test drive. We agreed, but were frankly a bit confused as to where and how the test drive would work. The car dealership was located on one of Moscow's busiest streets and rush hour traffic was bumper-to-bumper. The salesman took us out back to a small parking lot surrounded by a brick wall topped with razor wire with a padlocked gate.

The salesman sat behind the wheel and invited us to get in the car. Josie and I, naive as we were, willingly got in the car. Our driver Kostya, who was helping us with the purchase, sensed that something was wrong and at first declined to join us. After much urging, he sat in the back with an expression of foreboding on his face. The salesman fired up the engine and I waited for someone to come open the gate. That someone never came. Instead, the salesman gunned the engine and we careened across the parking lot headed straight for the brick wall. As we closed in on what we all thought was certain death, the salesman locked up the brakes and we screeched to a halt. Then the jammed the car into reverse and proceeded to repeat the exercise going backwards. All this time he was expounding on the merits of the car ("great engine. . . really good brakes, see?). After 4 or 5 trips across the parking lot, the adventure came to an end and we got out of the car. Kostya looked pale and laughed nervously, one eye twitching slightly.

The Payment
We arranged to buy the car. The dealership wanted us to pay for the car in cash ($15,000). After much negotiation, they agreed to a wire transfer. But the wire transfer would need to be broken into two payments and sent to an account in Seychelles (small island off the coast of Africa). Don't worry, they said, this is how all car purchases are made in Russia. [Note--we have a friend who bought a Lexus for $70,000 in cash and had an armed guard accompany him from the bank to the car dealership]. In 2005 we purchased another car from the same dealership and the process was much simpler and cleaner. They explained that tax enforcement had become much stronger and they have increased the transparency of their payment system.

Insurance
We now had come to the end of a 6-week process and had bought a car. The only remaining task was to buy insurance through a broker sitting at a desk inside the dealership. Too risky to drive the car off the lot without insurance. This seemed to be deceivingly simple. We completed a lot of paperwork. Then the broker gave us a quote based on how long each of us had been driving (Josie, Kostya and myself). Kostya had been driving only 5 years, so the rate was based on his driving experience as he had been driving the least amount of time. When the rate was figured and agreed, we produced our drivers licenses. The broker frowned and said that according to Josie's license, she had only been driving one year (she had just renewed her Illinois license). We explained the US system and assured her that Josie had been driving since she was 16. No luck. The broker explained that if we had no way of proving that, then the rate would be the "new driver" rate as if Josie had just started driving the previous year. Something in us snapped. The scene turned ugly as we did everything we could to try to convince the broker that their position was ridiculous. No amount of yelling, crying, or appealing to reason or fairness would sway her. This might seem like small setback, but it was the closest we have come in 6 years to packing our bags and leaving Russia. [Note--in Russia documents are everything--passports, visas, registrations, migration cards, etc. If your documents are in order, you can sleep peacefully. Without the right document, you are in for a lot of grief.] We finally bit the bullet and paid the extra money for the insurance. We drove home wondering what had ever possessed us to move to this country.

[Note--our two other car buying experiences went much more smoothly. We bought another car from a dealership after our Carisma was destroyed in an accident and then bought a minivan from another expat. Both times the payment and the insurance went quite smoothly.]

Registration
Each of the cars we drive has been officially registered in Kostya's name. We drive the cars under a power of attorney. Having the car registered in the name of a Russian eliminates some of the headaches of owning the car as a foreigner. For example, when we first arrived foreign-owned cars had yellow license plates. We considered this to be a measure to help the police decide which cars to stop for document checks (i.e. bribe extraction). The yellow license plates have since been discontinued. But foreigners are required to re-register their cars more frequently than Russians and some registration procedures require the actual owner to wait in long lines. So we opted for the "find a trusted friend" route.

Driving today
Kostya worked for us until 2005, driving Josie and our kids around in our car. We no longer have a driver for Josie and the kids; Josie drives herself and the kids take a bus to school. Jeff has a driver provided by his work. Moscow can be daunting at first--people driving on the shoulder of the road, people driving on the sidewalk, creating 5 lanes where there should be 3 etc. But after some time you get used to it and driving here is well within the reach of any expat.