Buying a Toyota in Paraguay – how does it work?
I think that anyone who discoveres Esteban have been really lucky.
Esteban speaks perfect fluent English, is fair, knowledgable and very, veeery helpful in not only everything related to cars and car purchases, but is also ready to answer any of your questions that you may have regarding Paraguay, how things work here, where to get things etc. I definitely feel by now that I owe him more than what I paid for. And he always is in search of improving his services even further by asking for feedback on existing and planned services, coming up with new ideas etc.
He even offered to help building a platform to sleep on and including storage for the case I decided to buy a different vehicle (Toyota LandCruiser Prado) than I intended (Toyota Hilux Surf) where the Surf allows you to sleep in it just by folding the rear seats while Prado would require this work to be done to be flat and usable for sleeping in the car.
We finally ended up finding a Surf but it was a struggle. They apparently import less and less of these vehicles and after I declined the first one that Esteban deemed very good mechanically but which did not have any of the additional features I wished for, it took over a month to find another one, by which time I was ready to buy almost anything that was mechanically good. Esteban inspected around 10 vehicles in the meantime and immediately deemed bad a few additional ones that I sent him ads for to assess.
Esteban also had most of the vehicles he found checked by a reliable mechanic and there always was something wrong that needed fixing first before it would be recommended by Esteban for me to buy. And things here in Paraguay do not always happen fast so we were left looking for more suitable candidates.
If I had taken the one that Esteban said was really good I would have had a car the first day we started looking. I did not take it because I was hoping something more according to my wishes would come along soon if this one was available on the first day. In retrospective it was a mistake on my part but Esteban is not at all pushy and just tells you what is good and what is not and thus after I did not buy that one he diligently looked for another one without a single hint of complain.
I definitely could not do this without him. I would have ended up with a cheaper, but alsmost assuredly much worse car that would require lots of repairs and still would not end up as good as the fresh import from Japan I have now. He was also very helpful with getting the paperwork sorted and went with me to get some of it and offered to go with me for the rest even though that is an additional service that I did not pay him for. I managed to do the habilitation registration on my own but he had no problem to come with me if I just waited till the afternoon when he would have the time to do it. I tried myself because I did not want to take even more of his time for things that I could possibly manage myself so I tried and with some minor problems I managed.
The car still requires some initial maintenance like all oils being changed, mine did not have window tinting that is quite necessary here and had a leaking rear differential caused by it being bumped against a boulder or something like that. That was fixed by another of Esteban’s mechanic friends who repaired the differential outer case for 200k Guaranies.
Only after I had a chance to drive it outside of the capital’s heavy traffic I discovered it had some steering problem and that is being taken care of now together with the recommended timing belt change with another of Esteban’s reliable mechanic freinds.
Esteban’s mission is to provide a complete service that extends beyond what you pay him for. He is a really service-oriented person who tries very hard to provide quality and honest service more reminiscent of a very good western service than what seems to be the standard here.
He always tries to do the best he can for you in every respect.
Esteban is extremely friendly and I am very happy to regard him as a friend now.