Cheaper than water

There are many things about Qatar that we don't like, but there is one thing we really have to gloat about: GAS PRICES. Gas is cheaper than water. We are renting a crappy little Seat Cordoba for the time being until we decide what type of car to buy. We get a good deal on the rental price because of Erik's job. Anyway, the average cost of filling the tank has been 34QR. Divide that by its 47-liter capacity and you get .72QR per liter. I suppose you're thinking that sounds pretty good. Well, let me put it into terms Europeans and Americans can understand and it will sound even better. First the Europeans: that's €6,28 which means gas costs €0,13 per liter. For those of you in the U.S., it costs the equivalent of $9.34 to fill the tank which boils down to 75¢ per gallon. Americans haven't seen numbers like that at the gas pumps since the late 1970s.

Basically, people don't care about gas consumption. They buy cars not caring. They drive cars not caring. They leave them empty and running on hot days not caring.

It is perfectly normal to see an empty car idling in a parking lot with the air-conditioning on in order to keep the interior at a comfortable temperature when its owner comes back after a 3-hour shopping expedition. There's no theft here and gas is cheap, so who cares?

They zip in and out of traffic and screech through roundabouts, probably consuming several liters which each insane rev of the engine. You can drive 80-100km/h (50-60mph) on the larger city streets and gas is cheap, so who cares?

The standard car of a native Qatari is the Toyota Land Cruiser - invariably white with some kind of fancy pin-striping (or pin-swooshing) on the sides.

It's used for dune bashing, barrier bashing, small car bashing, speed-bump jumping, off-roading in the middle of the city, you name it. Other typical cars you might see in Doha? Range Rover, Hummer, Pajero, BMW, Mercedes, Bentley and enormous double-cab American pick-ups. The bigger the better. You win the round-about competition and gas is cheap, so who cares? No need for diesels or hybrids. Let's not even start thinking about emissions...

As for us, we've looked at several cars. Yesterday we were even considering a Hummer for about 6.2 minutes and the Cadillac Acadia for exactly 4 minutes. We also like the Subaru Forester. Tomorrow we have appointments to test drive three cars including both a slightly used 2009 and a showroom sample 2010 model of the VW Tiguan. It's cheap here. The fully loaded 2010 is just 130,000QR (€23,969/$35,696). We can get a loan without question from the Qatar Foundation branch of QNB here and, if it's for a new car, we get a rebate of 20,000QR (€3688/$5491).

But alas, today we talked it over for about the 16th time and decided that cars are money-pits. We will probably just get something used, safe, cheap and robust. If we like it a lot, we'll attempt to drive it and our stuff home when we leave Qatar. If not, it will have to find itself a new owner. Just this evening we found an ad for a 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee and will try it tomorrow. We figure if we don't spend more than we would renting, it's a reasonable deal.

Around here, it's just too tempting to buy something fancy with all the bells and whistles since the difference in price between basic and luxury is so small. Heck, look at what musicians here are driving. Tell me. In what other orchestra parking lot in this world would you find these vehicles?

 

 

 

In the end, we'd rather sink our money into something that appreciates - like Erik's bass!!!