mrsbrown1971

We relocated to Katy from the North East of England on August 10th. My husbands employer is hiring him a car for a few months but we want to start looking at options for buying/leasing our own. He has passed his Texas driving test and I'm doing mine in the next couple of weeks. Any advice or recommendations woukd be gratefully received! Thanks.

TheKingOfHearts

Hey!

Welcome to Texas! I'm from Newcastle and moved to the Galleria area early last year.

International Autosource is well known amongst the forums and well regarded, but in most cases they require you to be outside of the US when ordering through them.

Outside of that, ExPatRide have came up a few times, but what might actually be best is using one of my major manufacturers ExPat programs for leasing & financing. VW (& Audi), Ford, BMW.

I'd suggest using the forum search feature, the question comes up a lot and theres a bunch of old threads you might find useful.

Welcome to HTX!

mrsbrown1971

Great thanks for this. We have come from Blyth so only 10 miles or so North of you on the coast!

mrken30

I assume you are looking at buying new, or are you considering used?

mrsbrown1971

Either or whatever will be available to us.

mrken30

You could look at ex rental cars if you don't expect to keep the car long. Most of the rental companies have their own car sales programs. I have found that Hertz tend to have the better prices. Also I recommend approaching some local credit unions to see what rates they give you on auto loans.

mrsbrown1971

Great thanks so much. There just happens to be an Avis car sales place 5 minutes from us 😊

Jack8602

Welcome to Texas!

VW/Audi/Mazda offer leases for business professionals - which is what i took out. They do a manual verification of your job, salary etc.

Good way to get on the credit build up.

https://www.vw.com/content/dam/vwcom...fessionals.pdf

mrsbrown1971

Thank you 😄

mrken30

One other thing to consider is where the local dealerships are for the manufacturer of the car you decide to buy. Also check how long that dealership has been servicing that make of vehicle.

EG We only have 2 Cadillac dealers locally, but both have been selling Cadillac for over 10 years. We have no Hummer dealers last time I looked. European cars tend to have less dealerships from my experience.

Owen778

That's a good point, but not something she will need to worry about in Katy. Pretty much every major brand is represented by a dealership on I-10, either in Katy or the Energy Corridor. I'm not sure there's a Hummer dealership there, but then I'm not sure why anyone would choose to buy a Hummer unless they're living in a war zone.

Owen778

Oh, and Welcome to Texas, Mrs. Brown!

Probably not the best time to arrive in Katy, but hopefully you're living far enough upstream of the reservoirs to be safe.

mrken30

Or a flood zone. May be useful for some parts of Texas.

Englishmum

Talking of floods....if you do choose to buy a secondhand car, it is in your best interest to get a Carfax report to find out about the vehicle's history when you type in the VIN number (there is a fee to do this, but you can see a sample report on the website):

Www.carfax.com

There will be a lot of (flood) damaged cars from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma going into the car auctions in the next few weeks and months and being re-sold by car dealers and some private sellers. A Carfax report will be invaluable if you are planning to part with $$$$. Also you will see if there is a lien on the car from a finance/leasing company or if the car has been stolen.

Pulaski

Hummer went out of business as part of the GM collapse and refloat, and was entirely gone by 2010.
And are prepared to buy a vehicle at least seven years old. .... Oh, and shell out big bucks for a "proper" Humvee (which was last produced in 2006) aka the "H1", not the faux-poseur H2's and H3's, which were basic GM vehicles "enhanced" with plastic trim that had no utility. As Doug Demuro said the H2 is "the most embarrassing vehicle you can drive":