Cars of Aruba

Thought you guys might like these; I was down on the beautiful island of Aruba in December. I have never seen such a diverse set of cars anywhere... This is the product of having a thriving, active car culture and apparently no import restrictions whatsoever. It's ostensibly a Dutch island so you get all the Euro stuff but also loads of JDM and US imports and I even saw a couple Holdens. Not bad for an island with less than 100 000 people total! They have a drag strip but I don't think any road course. Perfectly normal to find a Peugeot 106, R34 Skyline GT-R and diesel F250 duallie all sitting at the same intersection. Awesome place.

These are only a few that I took, really just the tip of the iceberg of what you get down there.

^^ This island is the natural habitat of the short-bed, 4-door compact pickup

Full album here (a few more pics): http://s185.photobucket.com/albums/x308/jay200mph/Aruba%202010/Cars%20of%20Aruba/

I'm still sorting through my photos of the trip but if anyone's interested I'll post the "actual" travel pics too, these are just the car ones for now.

Oh yeah, in the midst of all this automotive coolness I had a rental Suzuki Liana, which you may know as Top Gear's fomer "reasonably priced car." It was terrible, I never want to drive one of those things again.

Does that Ute actually have an official "Chevy" badge?

I've seen those utes in Mexico, and yes, it's badged as "Chevy".

I'll be there for a few weeks near the end of the month. I've been invited to take part in the festivities at the drag strip on January 27-29. It's a big race weekend there.

The scene has changed quite a bit in the last 4-5 years. The big trucks are a fairly new thing, and the last I heard, the government was talking about putting a stop to the RHD cars, because they think they're unsafe. The prices on the RHD stuff are pretty good.

Your Liana was fairly typical of the rentals there. For what they charge, you'd think they'd be pretty decent, but there are some scary bad rentals there, and a lot of them get offroaded on the north side of the island. I had a Yaris/Echo once that was, as my DIL put it, the worst car I've ever been in. It was so bad, she wouldn't drive it, and she's a farm girl

I can't remember what those utes are called (Astra maybe?) but I liked the Chevy Celta. Kind of like the last gen Suzuki Swift, but about 3/4 the size.

Zomby woof wrote: Your Liana was fairly typical of the rentals there. For what they charge, you'd think they'd be pretty decent, but there are some scary bad rentals there, and a lot of them get offroaded on the north side of the island...

Wait, you're not supposed to do that? E36 M3.

Jay, where did you stay? How's the pastechi?

We rented a house in Oranjestad (the whole family came down there for Christmas...) It was pretty nice. I think my parents are going to buy a place there soon, they've been going almost every year for the last eight years or so.

We looked at buying, but for us, I think it makes more sense to rent.

This is what I rent when I'm there

The rat rods sit out front of a store, which I've seen a million times, but do you think I can remember what they sell?

Zomby woof wrote:

I'm guessing that thing has traction issues.

The island of Aruba is great. Went there for my honeymoon a couple years ago. It is the location of the best sounding Toyota Tercel I've ever heard. I watched it as it drove past to figure out HOW but nothing came to mind. Impressive though.

We rented a TJ and did not off-road on the backside of the island. We got some great pictures back there...

We were in Antigua about 18 months ago. The island is poorer than Aruba, so less neat cars, but we did see a few riced Hondas and snazzy Mercedes-Benzs. The main thing is how ~different~ the local cars are there. Anitgua drives on left side of road, so most cars are rhd. Roads are very narrow and poor. We bent a rim on our rental Nissan Tiida (Sentra) but there was no charge for damage. Most large tractor trailers are US-spec LHD drive, so it's interesting around the town areas.

Laid-back attitude about drinking and driving:

Chevy Spark

Hyundai

Kia truck (common)

RHD Jeep CJ

Suzuki dealer

The Toyota HiAce van we hired one day. 2.7 liter twin cam with five speed manual shift (stick coming out of the dash board by the way, so they could have a center front seat). 14 seats in all! I'd love one of these.The 2nd HiAce shown is a 3.0 turbo diesel.

Very common Delta mini-dump truck. Locals ride in the back of them all over the place.

Chinese Avanti bike.

What is this?

I saw those same cars when I was there in the summer. I saw 3 Skylines in a week, 1 Supra, 1 RX7, bunch of street bikes and those hot rods you posted.

The Suzuki Swift was a pretty cool looking hatch. Would be cool to see it here.

In reply to 914Driver:

I believe this is a Chevrolet Montana. Little FWD "lifestyle" pickup truck, which I think would save the small truck segment here stateside IMO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Montana

I saw a ton of theose Hiace vans in Hong Kong late last year. Man, they are freakin cool. That would make me consider a van, really...