Customized $10,000 cars rising in popularity in Vietnam

Almost everything you can imagine is cheaper in Vietnam than in other places in the world. This is one of the great things about living here because even if you aren't actively trying to make it that way, the cost of living is much lower here than other parts of the globe. Some friends of mine refer to this country as the "cheapest safe place to live in the world."

There are places that are nicer, sure, but you can't live in them for $1000 a month, which is about what it costs to live rather nicely here.

There is one thing though that chances are it is dramatically MORE expensive here than in other places in the world and that is vehicle ownership. Vietnam doesn't manufacture a great many car brands and they only have one that is a national product in that the brand originates here. That company is Vinfast and they have some pretty damn good-looking cars on the market.

Most of their cars are pretty expensive because they teamed up with BMW for the engines in an attempt to gain a wider luxury audience but they also manufacture these smaller cars called the VF3 that are around $10,000 brand new. They haven't been out for long enough to know whether they are just going to fall apart in a few years due to poor craftsmanship or bad materials, but I'm seeing so many of them that I really hope that is not the case.

Something that people seem to like to do with these cars is customize them like crazy. They don't come in a great many colors, so I've been told, so people have taken to adding accessories and racks and even ladders to get to the top. This is more funny than anything else because these are definitely not all-terrain vehicles and unless you are a midget, you wouldn't ever need a ladder to get on top of them.

Customizing them with decals is so popular that I very rarely tsee a stock standard one like this one here. I would imagine that the owner is waiting for an appointment for his or her customization because it is just after Tet right now, and most places still aren't up to full working capacity.

These are tiny little cars, so the roof racks I suppose could come in handy because the very small back area wouldn't allow you to carry much more than your groceries. I think it would be quite uncomfortable or impossible to be a back seat passenger.

Every one of them that i see has a slightly different personality to them. The wheels or the decal jobs are something that is left up to the user. I'm presuming they can make just about whatever you want to put on them.

I feel like perhaps the car company themselves are encouraging this sort of customization because otherwise it is just a stock standard cheap car. At least this was the people who likely can't afford much more of a car can express themselves and some of the cars are so awesome looking that I think they look better than far more expensive cars.

I would imagine that these are not high-performance vehicles but honestly, provided they will do around 80km / hour they are just fine for this country. The roads are so packed here that you are never going to get up to high speeds anyway and the speeding tickets are so high here that you definitely don't want to be on the receiving end of one of those.

I've been told these are available in limited markets in USA and parts of Europe. If you ever see one I'd really like it if you took a pic of it so I can marvel at how "far from home" one of these managed to get!