A Honda Civic for R$ 850.000: how Singapore made the car a rich man’s article

If having a vehicle in Brazil is getting expensive, Singapore can take the concept of “expensive” to an astronomical level. The island nation is recognized as the most expensive place in the world to buy a car, with sky-high prices due to a strict vehicle control policy in the small city-state.

There, the license that gives the right to drive a car for ten years cost S$ 123,890 (about R$ 499,014) in the last auction of authorizations, which ended on August 5. The value is higher than the price of several luxury cars — and does not include the car. It is only the paper that authorizes the registration of the vehicle.

The license is called the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) and is the centerpiece of the quota system that the city-state uses to limit the fleet. With 12% of the territory occupied by roads, the government maintains a zero-growth policy for private cars: a car only enters circulation when another leaves. The certificates are distributed in open auctions held twice a month by the Land Transport Authority (LTA), the country’s transport authority.

Five categories, five prices

Quota A, the most popular, covers combustion cars with an engine of up to 1,600 cm³ and 132 hp, as well as electric cars of up to 150 hp. It was the one that closed at S$ 123,890. The B quota, for larger and more powerful engines, came out for S$ 129,910. Category C, for cargo vehicles and buses, cost S$ 91,545, and category D, mandatory for motorcycles, S$ 10,503. The E is an open category, valid for everything but motorcycles, and closed at S$ 131,000. Only C and E dimensions can be transferred.

It is worth an adjustment of perspective: the August price in quota A represents a truce. In July, the same certificate hit an all-time high of S$129,000.

And the COE is only part of the bill

Added to the car, the result defies comparisons. A Honda Civic without hybridization is advertised in Singapore for S$ 211,899, about US$ 165,6 thousand. In the United States, the Civic LX 2026 costs US$ 25.890, already with delivery fees. The Japanese sedan therefore costs more than the country’s median annual household income of S$149,352 (US$116,700). At the top of the table, a Mercedes-Benz GLE starts at S$ 572,888, almost US$ 100 thousand above the price of a McLaren 750S in the United States.

The certificate, however, is only one of the layers. The buyer also pays a registration fee, consumption tax of 20% on the import value, 9% tax on goods and services and the Additional Registration Fee, which varies from 100% to 320% of the value of the vehicle, in progressive ranges.

After ten years, those who want to keep the car need to pay the Prevailing Quota Premium (PQP), the moving average of the prices of the shares in the previous three months — 100% of the value to renew for another decade or 50% for five years, without the right to a new extension. The window is one month after expiration; After the deadline, the vehicle needs to be unregistered. Even so, the queue does not decrease: in the last auction, LTA received 1,522 bids in category A and 1,316 in category B.