Buying a Naples Beater

It's been two weeks since we first arrived in our new home of Naples, and the only complains is my marito's driving! I should have died twice now, but luck was on my side of the car! (Just kidding mom and dad- he's American and has a little bit of road rage- which I knew when I married him.)

After we completed AO and received our drivers licensse we headed straight to Europcar beside the NEX and rented a vehicle. We didn't want to have to rely on our sponsor or the bus to get around. Plus I'm a busy body and have to get out of the hotel and explore. Just a heads up, automatic cars cost more to rent than manuals, we were fortunate that someone cancled thier pickup so we were able to get a small manual for about 35 euros a day (without additional insurance). We rented it for a week, and during that time we've been looking at cars in the Lemon Lot.

I had no idea where the Lemon Lot was located, but for our new PCS families, the lot is 3-4 rows of parking in front of the Fire Station which is across the street from the NEX. None of these cars were dream cars, they all are hand me downs and mostly manual transmission. Not my ideal car! Guess I will have to learn.

Last week we were browsing through the lot and spotted a white VW Golf. Now my marito just sold his second VW Jetta, so he has a soft spot for VW. Unfortunatly this car isn't available until next month, but we contacted them anyways. The owner was firm on when they could sell the vehicle, but did have another vehicle they were about to sell- a 2000 Alfa Romeo 145. A wha? Never heard of it, but boy did marito get excited! We made an appointment to test drive the car, and check it out, it was pretty sound and the price was right. For $2750 we were finally in the right ball park. I really didn't want to buy a $1000 car, nor did I want to buy something over $3000- insurance is expensive enough, and we are only going it have it for 3 years.

With cash in hand we were able to settle on $2500 for our Naples Beater! Went to the Motor Vehicle Registration Office (MVRO) to change the title over and get our plates.  It was easy to go to USAA.com and chat online with an agent to add the Alfa onto our insurance policy. For liability only on the beater we are paying around $500 a year!! That is over half of what we paid for full coverage in the states on 2 cars!! Holy Smokes Batman! Just wait until I tell you how much it is for the Rav4 we are bringing over...! 

Marito is happy he got a decent car. He didn't want to be stuck with something too small, or too big, or pretty broken. One of the guys we met at the hotel bought a car for $700. It's tiny, but he will be living 2 blocks from work, so he will manage. His car was advertised as so: "Has some Naples Kisses, but doesn't look like she got drunk and made out with the entire town!" Such a cute way of saying the car has love taps.

I look forward to learning how to drive stick, but I cannot wait to get my automatic back!! My Rav4 is brand new, and I am worry about getting Naples Kisses on it, but I wasn't ready to part ways with it and leave it behind. With bringing over my baby, come the price of insurance. In the States I had half a million dollars of coverage on my vehicle, and that was with extra coverage. Here in Italy the MINIMUM coverage is FIVE MILLION EUROS! Needless to say, with full coverage on my car and liability on his it is over Seven Thousand Dollars a year here. Fortunate for us my parents enrolled me in USAA when I was 13. My mom got me a pre-paid debit card. THANK YOU MOM!!! With my "Legacy" (length of time as a memeber) I am saving over three grand! So both vehicles will cost us around $4,000 a year, which is over 4 times the price in America, but I'm not going to risk not having insurance. Infact the base won't let you. But I did put minimum amount of miles on both vehicles (5,900 miles a year). This lowered our rates quite a bit.

My car won't be hear until September, and I can't wait. With a GPS in hand I can finally learn the roads from the drivers seat- it's deifferent when you're always the passenger. I'm sure I will get lost, so look forward to reading about that!