People are unnecessarily afraid of buying a car from the US. The parts are cheap, the delivery is fast and the failure rate is minimal

Driving in a car like the Dodge Challenger is a dream come true for most motorists. But what about its ownership? Will it cause its owner more trouble than joy? We found this out with Jakub Bálek, a mechanic at Carteon car rental, who services all these cars. We will of course start by buying directly from America. “We have a proven car dealership in Miami, where an acquaintance of ours works. We always tell him what we are looking for and he gets it for us. But it can also be done online, for example through auctions, you just buy a little bit blindly. Therefore, it is always better to contact someone directly on the spot,” explained Bálek to the editors of Autosalon.tv.

The Dodge Challenger that we had on loan will cost around 900,000 crowns. However, it costs half in the USA, and the other half costs its import to the Czech Republic. Even so, it is said to be worth it. “The most expensive is transport, it costs just as much as the car itself. In the Czech Republic, you also have to count on costs of around 50,000 crowns. You will pay approximately 20,000 for European lights, without which the car will not be registered, and another 26,000 for the technical one. Plus some other fees around. When all this is added up, we will still save on it, otherwise we would understandably not do it,” added the mechanic.

According to Jakub Bálk, the delivery of a car from the United States will take two to three months, depending on the speed of transport in the US, the workload of the ship transport, the time for customs clearance and subsequent transport from Germany to the Czech Republic. But what about spare parts? “Spare parts come quickly, we have them in Prague within three days and they are not expensive either. For example, high-quality drilled brakes will cost 20,000 crowns there. More basic then for 12 thousand.

And the car rental mechanic doesn’t even see reliability as a problem. “The Dodge you borrowed didn’t break down in 60,000 miles. We only did routine service procedures such as changing oil, brake pads and the like.” They say that none of their cars has had a single engine or transmission failure. The only thing that has to be changed is the rear differential, it goes away after about 200,000 kilometers.