6 Reasons Why Being A Petrolhead in Indonesia SUCKS #blogpost

I’m currently spending holidays in my hometown (for those of you who don’t know, I’m from Indonesia and I live and work in California) and I really like it here as a normal human being. You have lots of destinations (Sumatra and Jogjakarta are one of the best ones, Bali is a bit dirty for me), (local) foods are absolutely cheap (you can buy porridge for less than 1 USD), and many, many things. But, as a car enthusiast, Indonesia is probably not where you want to be. And here are some of the reasons why.

1. Traffic

Oh boy. Yep. Traffics are not a big problem in other cities in Indonesia, only Jakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya have the biggest ones. So why not stay away from Bandung, Jakarta, and Surabaya? Well, that’s gonna be a #3 topic. On the #1 topic, traffic jams are huge here. I want to tell you a story first. Okay, so, my house is in South Jakarta and I want to visit a friend in East Jakarta. We (Me and my brother) set off in his BMW M3 F80 (a unicorn in Indonesia) at around 10 AM. It was December 24th, one day before I went to Pangkal Pinang (a place that you should visit). We went to PIM (Pondok Indah Mall) for lunch and from PIM, we went to the highway entrance in front of an Infiniti dealership and then we saw the traffic. It was….no one’s moving, no one. We decided to go through Pasar Minggu and then Kampung Rambutan and then straight to his place. Well, we encountered traffic jams everywhere we went (FYI, it was around 1 PM). We finally arrived at Pasar Minggu around 4 PM. Remember, we went from PIM (which is in South Jakarta) to Pasar Minggu (East Jakarta-ish) in about 3 hours. We were stuck in traffic. And then at 7 PM, we’re still in Pasar Minggu. I KNOW RIGHT! After that, we decided to call it a day and went home (which took another 3 hours).

2. Variety of cars

Well, unlike in Korea where everything is black and/or white, in Indonesia, we still have colorful cars (Red is the most common non-B/W color), but the variety of the cars is..a bit dull and soul-less, shall we say. Toyota Avanza and Daihatsu Xenias are everywhere. If in America, most BMW drivers are #1 ass holes on the road, in Indonesia, most Avanza/Xenia owners are the #1 ass holes. There’s a good news: Prius in Indonesia is as rare as Lamborghini Reventons worldwide. You can’t go 1 km in Jakarta without spotting at least 30 Avanza/Xenias. Look at the picture above. That Avanza picture is photobombed by another Avanza (the black one).

3. Jakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya are the only places for car enthusiasts

As I said in #1, Jakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya are full of traffic but you have to stay there. Why? Because those 3 places are the only places where you’ll find proper enthusiast community. You can go for some traffic-free culinary adventure in Berastagi, Medan, North Sumatra but you don’t find any car enthusiast community there.You’ll find M Owners Club Indonesia in Jakarta, but you’ll be stuck in traffic. In Bandung, there are good amount of car communities (mostly German cars) and some supercars too. I took a ride in an LP570-4 Superleggera there.

4. Fuel prices

The fuel price for RON 92 here is $3.04/US gallon. That’s…quite a lot.

5. Used car prices

In the US, you can easily get an E92 BMW M3 for about $35,000. Here? You must be very lucky if you manage to get one for $90k. That red BMW M3 is currently for sale. The asking price? $108,420. $108 grand, yes, you heard me. YES! $108k!!!! You can get a CTS-V and a 360 Modena in the US for that kind of money!

6. Imports

Importing a new car is easy but expensive as fck. Importing a used car is hard and more expensive as fck (as far as I know). Hey, LHD cars are illegal here unless they’re over 30 years old (as far as I know). I once saw a 2011-ish Shelby GT500 in PIM and I was confused to death on how the f*ck did the owner managed to get one here. Yes, it’s LHD. A lot of laws and import taxes are blocking us from importing some used cars.

Well, I hope you enjoy my #blogpost, everyone!

Salam kenal untuk CTzen dari Indonesia!