CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO — While some Americans are congratulating themselves on switching to fuel-sipping cars, their old gas guzzlers just won't die. Lowered trade barriers are giving them new life south of the border.
Thousands of used vehicles from as far away as Colorado and Missouri jam tiny car lots and auto salvage yards in this gritty border city. An estimated 25,000 families make a living here hustling U.S. castoffs. Among them is Jose Zavala, a wiry used-car dealer with a trucker's cap and an eye for bargains.
At a recent auto auction in neighboring El Paso, Texas, he snagged a decrepit 1974 Ford Gran Torino that brought snickers from the crowd. But it's Zavala who may have the last laugh. He figures he can sell the wizened muscle car to some "Starsky & Hutch" wannabe in Juarez for at least four times the $100 that he paid for it.
"If it's cheap and it runs," it will find a home in Mexico, Zavala said.
That's precisely what is worrying environmentalists and new-car dealers, who say falling trade barriers are fueling an invasion of smoky junkers. More than 3 million late-model vehicles have rumbled legally south of the border in the last 2 1/2 years. Millions more are on the way, thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The vintage metal is rattling Mexico's retail car market. Sales of new vehicles have stalled at 1.1 million a year as used imports have overtaken them. Sales of new subcompacts -- the most popular class of cars in Mexico because of their price -- skidded 16.4% last year as buyers snapped up cheaper, roomier used vehicles from the U.S.
Factory worker David Ortiz was checking out sport utility vehicles recently on Calle Carlos Amaya in Ciudad Juarez. The public street doubles as an open-air auto bazaar with hundreds of high-mileage, late-model vehicles parked bumper to dented bumper. He said used cars from the U.S. were more desirable than those from Mexico because they tend to be bigger and to have spent less time on pitted, unpaved streets such as those common in parts of Juarez.
"They've got good roads over there," he said of the United States.
For decades, Mexico restricted imports of used vehicles and slapped hefty taxes on new ones, which meant Mexicans paid more than U.S. consumers for the exact same vehicles. That spawned a huge black market in jalopies, particularly in the border region.
