Owning a car in Russia can present more problems than it solves.
First there is the import duty, which pushes the cost of a top-range marque up a hefty 50% to more than R4million.
Then there are the ubiquitous traffic jams in Moscow, where cars move at a sedate average of 19kph — slightly faster than in London, though, which clocks in at 18kph.
But Alexander Pikulenko of Echo Moskvy radio said Muscovites will not be parted from their cars.
‘People don’t like going by metro. It’s too crowded,” he said. ‘They prefer to sit in a traffic jam.”
Then there is theft.
Last summer a professional gang stole seven Bentleys from different locations in central Moscow. One of the victims was a 25-year-old woman, described by the Interfax news agency as unemployed.
She walked out of her apartment in the illustrious Kutozvosky Prospect, the street where Leonid Brezhnev used to live, to discover her Bentley Continental GT, worth R2,5-million, was missing. —