Saudi Mobility

One of the more familiar aspects of living in Saudi Arabia is the necessity of owning a car. Public transportation is nonexistent, so it is necessary to own a car. Most Saudi families own multiple cars for their husband, wife(wives), and children. I would almost be willing to put money on the idea that there are almost as many cars in Riyadh as there are people in the city. So the roads are crowded and the driving here is unlike any driving that you would ever encounter in the worst driving cities in the United States. We no longer get excited to see cars running red lights as traffic flows, driving against traffic on 6 lane highways, and cars on fire scarcely get more than a nod of notice from us.


However, I can tell you that we do notice not having a car. For the last seven day we have been sans transportation. Our car would not crank up after we returned from the States. Chris , our neighbor/banker Sammi and the compound employees managed to get the car cranked up and when I returned it still worked. A week ago this past Sunday, I went to do some errands and came home. Our car had been making a high pitched humming noise that indicated an electrical issue since last April but we waited until we returned to attempt to have it fixed since it was not interfering with the operation of the car. Claude, a colleague and neighbor needed us to take him to a car shop because he had an issue with his car when lo and behold, our car wouldn’t crank again. I figured the car wouldn’t crank due to some reason associated with that noise. We couldn’t get the car started that evening so we tried again the next day and drove around. That Tuesday I dropped the car at the dealership to have it worked on. Mind you, the delay in bringing it to the shop had to do with the Muslim Eid holiday. That delay on the front end was being met with the holiday on Wednesday for Saudi national day. Had I not picked the car up today, we would have had another four days without a car. This would have been a problem because we need school supplies and provisions.

Our car got an oil change, changed the idle speed relay, a fan bearing replaced, had an A/C issue fixed, needed a new battery, had the cabin air filter cleaned and the rear door hinges replaced. Some of these things may have been covered by our cars extended warranty. When we got a car I was keen on buying a nearly new car since a warranty would fix any issues we had. This idea was validated by the fact that Claude, Josh and Rick all bought quite used cars and have lost a great deal of time and money on repairs. That’s not to say that they haven’t been good cars for them but I can confirm transmission and engine replacements as just some of the repairs.

We got quite lucky and the warranty covered most of the repairs. We lost the car for the week but all of the repairs I talked about cost less than 1,200 SR, roughly $346. Sure we paid a little more for the car, but it has really been quite worth it.

We have the car back, with the wheel and seat wrapped in plastic for protection!  Alex had a grand time taking it all off!