3 years ago when I was shopping for a car, I was what you could call a Nigerian-German. Let me clarify a few things. I knew that the name Mercedes Benz was coined out of Carl Benz’s name and the daughter of a prominent sponsor of Gotlieb Daimler before I was 7 years old. My Dad was a practicing Auto Mechanic. He had a regular 9-5 Job in an oil company (Conoil), but Serviced and repaired his car himself. We took a great liking to Cars at a very early age. And 1ce it was time to buy mine, it was definitely going to be a German Car. I couldn’t afford a 3 series, so I settled for the next best thing. A Golf!!!! The Golf provides a fair balance of Power, reliability, durability, simplicity and it definitely has a Fun factor to it. For me, Performance comes before anything (well I thought so).
Change they say is the only constant thing in Life, within this time I’ve gotten married and strangely I now realize that reliability in a car seems to be a more important factor than performance. The Golf is a really great car (its Volkswagen’s largest volume seller) and I’ve not for 1 bit regretted buying it, but something happened that has set me on a slippery slope. I discovered early in the day that Slama (my Golf) is scared of water like a Dog is. At the slightest site of it, she passes out. This has been made worse now by the constant rains we’ve been experiencing on the Island. Like a Navigation system I plot my movement, keeping clear of places that tend to have drainage issues. This even affected my choice to settle in Ajah over Gbagada!!!!!!
I’ve slid up to the point that I am considering the route that Jigga took, getting a Toyota to replace Slama. 3 years ago, such a thought I would consider to be sacrilege. But I’ve done a bit of research on Toyota’s in Nigeria and discovered that they hold more than 80% of its value after 3 years. i.e you buy a tiny light Camry for 1 million and after 3 years, if you use it well you can still find someone to buy it for 800,000. That’s insane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!