We keep a handful of cars, pickups and small vans rather than a yard full. Used and typically five to twelve years old, from about 150,000 rufiyaa for a popular Japanese hatchback to 420,000 for a pickup fit for island work.
The first conversation is whether you need one. This island is about two square kilometres, and a car here costs perhaps five times what a bike costs to buy, several times more to run, and needs somewhere to be left, which in most wards is the genuinely scarce thing. For a family who travel together with small children, carry goods, or regularly cross the bridge, a car is worth it. For getting to work and to school, it usually is not, and we will say so.
If you do want one, what matters here is not what matters elsewhere. Salt and short journeys are the two enemies. Short trips mean an engine that rarely reaches full temperature, which is hard on oil and on exhaust systems. Salt means we look underneath first, at the subframe, the suspension mounts, the brake pipes and the boot floor, before anybody discusses the interior. We put a vehicle on a lift and look, and we invite you to stand there and look with us.
Air conditioning is not a comfort item in this climate, it is the main system in the car after the engine, so we test it properly at idle in the heat rather than for thirty seconds on a cool morning.
Pickups and small vans are a different purchase, usually for a business, and there the questions are load, turning circle in a Malé lane, and whether it can be reversed into the space you actually have. We will come and look at the space.
Every vehicle comes with the inspection written down, the service history where it exists, and a plain statement where it does not.