The Ridiculous Car Prices in Jamaica

August 8, 2025

Diamond A. Buchanan | Dabuchanan0325@gmail.com

Quite contrary to what the title of the piece says, I believe the car prices in Jamaica to be beyond ridiculous. Take for instance, the new car market in which you cannot acquire a brand new car for anywhere in the $3,000,000 JMD bracket. Not to mention the high interest rates that financial institutions are offering or are trying to lock you into for these cars. The most glaring example is Toyota Jamaica. 

Toyota Jamaica will forever get sales. Jamaica is a Toyota and Honda country. And therefore, the two dealerships on this island that will always get sales are Toyota Jamaica and Honda Jamaica. However, I will focus on Toyota Jamaica more because of the blatant and quite frankly the most unfortunate practices of greed and thievery, I believe, are practiced at Toyota Jamaica. Most new car dealerships offer five to eight years worth of warranty on their vehicles. However, Toyota Jamaica only offers a three year warranty on their vehicles.

Somebody that is indoctrinated would say that it's because Toyota is considered as the most reliable car brand in the world. But I would say that if Toyota Jamaica believes so much in their product, they should offer a longer warranty and not a shorter on. It is a very unfortunate display of greed, not to mention the tendency of these dealerships to take advantage of an "image".

I truly believe that they should increase their warranty package to what is off market standard in Jamaica, which is five years. Another problem at Toyota Jamaica is upon doing extensive research and comparison of models and interiors, I can firmly and truthfully clearly say that Toyota Jamaica does not acquire its vehicles from Japan. This is not a practice that is unique to them but I find it relevant to mention because of the expectation or the ideology that Japanese made cars are far more likely superior to other manufacturers such as Korean, Chinese and German cars.

I am well aware of this fact because of the differences between the models of Toyotas sold in Japan via Japan Toyota Japan's website and those that are sold in Jamaica by Toyota Jamaica. They seem to be of lower quality or of a lower standard than the ones that are sold in Japan I can gauge this quality or this difference in quality by inspecting the steering wheels of both a vehicle imported from Japan and a vehicle you can buy from Toyota Jamaica's. Toyota  Jamaica's model of cars are normally missing  buttons on the right side of the steering wheel. These vehicles are obviously of the same origin as the ones sold in South Africa. I don't know exactly where these vehicles are bought from or where they are manufactured. I just know that the vehicles sold by Toyota Jamaica are not made in Japan.  Thirdly, the quality of the vehicle sold by the dealership.

I recently read a tweet on Twitter about a woman who bought her 2020 Toyota Rav4 from Toyota Jamaica and three years later she and her husband were on an excursion. I believe their transmission went now keep in mind that the warranty period for a Toyota Jamaica vehicle is three years and a Toyota RAV four is a vehicle that you would never expect to blow a transmission within three years of being bought the Toyota Rav4 is the flagship vehicle of Toyota and the fact that her Rav4 failed after just three years and then she was told by Toyota Jamaica that the warranty does not cover transmission issues is probably the worst case scenario of corporate greed that I've ever heard in the car industry

Another culprit I would like to highlight is BYD Jamaica. BYD (Build Your Dreams) is an electric car brand and in Jamaica it falls under the ATL automotive umbrella of car brands. I believe I am justified in highlighting this specific car brand in Jamaica because of the unusually high price range of the vehicles. It is important to note that in Jamaica the import duty for electric vehicles is a measly 10% but unfortunately the BYD vehicles in Jamaica are priced at a very exorbitant price. They are more expensive than gas cars, the range of import duty for gas cars starts at 45% for 1000 CC and below and 73% for cars exceeding 3500 CC.

There is a saying that goes 'If the fox cannot get the grape, he calls it sour'. That's not the case here. I do not know where it is that BYD sources it's vehicles from but what I do know in a general sense electric cars, especially Chinese electric cars are especially cheap and with an only 10% import duty and electric vehicles given by the government of Jamaica I don't believe that the brand cars BYD should be selling at the prices that they are currently. I will use the BYD Yuan Plus as an example. Earlier in the year, the cost of the car was $6.2M JMD / 38750 USD. At the time of writing this article, ATL Automotive is having their boss sale, which is supposed to be a SALE, and the same car is listed at $6.995M JMD.