A red van.

A van, but a Mexican van.

Red van

More French cars

This time a Renault 12.

France is never very far

While walking in the street I found this shop which is selling parts for the French Alpine Renault sport car. It's the second vintage french car I noticed in Mexico city.

Two Alpine Renault A110

Alpine Renault A110

Renault 8

Like new :

Renault 8

The Mexican VW Beetle

There are a lot of this model in the streets, even taxis, despite their (small) size. But there is a very good reason for that : they were introduced in Mexico in 1954 and assembled here since 1967.

You can read more about the Mexican species of the Beetle on Wikipedia.

VW Beetle, classic

VW Beetle, classic

VW Beetle, new.

Mexico city, cars' kingdom

A friend of Lorely was waiting for us at the airport. She drove us to Lorely's apartment, a 30 minutes drive maybe ?

The first thing I noticed was the cars : it seemed to me that the streets were crowded by only 2 different types of vehicles, namely :

1. large SUV's (Chevrolet, Land Rover, etc.) or luxurious cars (Mercedes, Audi, etc.),
2. VW Beetles (or any little old car in the worse condition you ever saw). Most taxis are very small cars.

Type 1 cars make the streets look like the (wealthy area of) USA, while the type 2 more like some Indian suburb I guess.

Custom lock.

The Mexican beetle

I cannot say the Mexican driver drives badly, they just ignore all the rules but seem less aggressive than the Parisian species. Also I suspect that they confuse the horn with the accelerator pedal. Another theory is that like dolphins or whales their cars have their own way of communicating with each other.


Forgetting that cars can turn right at the red light when the light is red can kill you. Also, like in the USA, the red light is on the other side of the intersection.

Green light, green car.

Red already ? Who cares.

Crossing Insurgentes

As you can see on the picture above medium sized cars are the majority in the city.