Steve_

Um, depends whereabouts in Vancouver you're going to be living and what sort of commuting you're doing. But the traffic downtown is pretty intense, the Toyota Prius is pretty popular but the most popular car in Canada and certainly in Vancouver is the Honda Civic. The problem is that car thieves tend to focus on them.

Certainly they're cost-effective. One tip is that sometimes parts and servicing can be cheaper in the US and driving to the US from Vancouver is no big deal, however to be able to do it you need to buy a car of which there is a US equivalent (not really an issue for an oil change but for more serious stuff where they need to plug it into a computer for example I've found it can be).

Also I've found there is a lot of crap that dealers in Canada will tell you, for example I bought a new tire in the US and they told me it wasn't Canadian-spec which was rubbish, the only difference was the US DOT sticker on it. But they don't like being undercut by US dealers.

JonboyE

That is good to know. Our CRV is 11 years old and hasn't needed anything more that routine service (still on second set of tires, second timing belt and third set of break pads). I thought we would replace it at 300,000 kms but there might be a few more years in the old thing yet.

getoutofbritainquick

The way the drive in Vancouver.... a tank!

iaink

Doesnt Vancouver have one of those car sharing schemes?

Ideal for occasional users I would think.

http://www.cooperativeauto.net/

MikeUK

One way to get rid of the thieves and bring the cost down, both price and running costs is to get it with a manual transmission.

paolosmythe

I understand that Honda Civics are the most stolen car in Lower BC.

Toyota Corolla are everywhere, like a plague and are usually driven by the biggest retards.

If you want to drive defensively, you could get a jacked up Toyota 4Runner with monster truck wheels; they seem to be quite common on the 'extreme commute' (bunch of twots).

For me, i bought a Buick; novelty factor mainly (never heard of them before coming over here) a nice big sedan with a bench front seat, 3.1L V-summut and enough haulage space. Drive like a flying carpet.

AlexInBC

Absolutely - ours is a manual and that's what I wanted - since we plan to keep it until it falls apart and resale isn't an issue. I can see that it would make it far less desirable to thieves. There are many of our friends and neighbours who seemed impressed to hear that we know how to drive a manual car, when obviously it's nothing to most Brits. When we got ours, the garage had a half-dozen manual pre-owned Civics on the forecourt, but no automatics. They said it was because the auto's sold as soon as they came in, but some of their bargain price, fantastic condition, low mileage, fully loaded manual transmission ones had been sat there for almost 12 months!