New Automobile

I sold my VolksWagen Golf last month, cashed in the remainder of my annual car insurance and had a healthy sum to buy a newer car in New Zealand, wonderful stuff, or so I thought. My aim was a manual estate car with a mid size engine around 1.6 – 1.8 litres and to cost under $2,000 (£1,000). Alas, I was surprised on all counts; manuals are rarer than automatics are in the UK, estates are called station wagons (American Influence?), most estate car engines start at two litres with three litre engines are very common and when compared to the UK the equivalent car in New Zealand costs usually between two and three times more after converting currencies. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

There are three main ways of getting a car in Auckland, all of which I attempted; through a car dealer, the Ellerslie car fair or on Trademe.co.nz, the New Zealand equivalent to Ebay.co.nz, which they barely use over here. They also don’t have Amazon in New Zealand. 

Firstly, to the Ellerslie car fair: Basically lots of people turn up here and try to sell their car every Sunday. One of the benefits of the car fair is that people are often desperate to sell and the prices can be somewhat lower than elsewhere, the downside being that you could buy a wreak of a car and have zero comeback. The only support is that for a small charge the AA (Automobile Association) will undertake a check of your prospective car and say if it appears mechanically sound or not. Being the cautious type and not finding any suitable manual estate cars I headed home car-less. In the mean time I approached several car dealers and the starting conversation normally went like this:

“Hi There, I’m looking for a station wagon”

“Right.”

“that's under $2,000”

“Yep.”

"with a 1.6 or 1.8 litre engine"

"Errrr, ok."

“that’s manual.”

“Oh.....”

Had I mistakenly gone into several hardware shops and asked for a left-handed screwdriver? No, but I may as well have done, this car combination I was realizing was very rare and after nearly three weeks of searching I might have to buy a go-kart, oh sorry, I meant to write automatic there. One garage had a two litre, 1998 Nissan Primera estate with automatic transmission for only $3,500 (£1,750). A quick check on Ebay UK shows the equivalent to be about $1,800 (£900) which is quite a difference.This was quite unusual for a garage to actually have a semi suitable for me car so I took a look and it had alloy wheels and everything was electric both aspects I would rather do without but a somewhat suitable car nonetheless. It drove well and seemed a good deal so I told the salesman I’d let him know in the next day or two if I’d take it.

That evening on Trademe a 1998 Nissan Primera of the same make and model but a 1.8 litre instead of two litres was advertised, brilliant, and the owners had a full AA check and were selling because they were leaving the country so they had a good reason to sell. When I saw the car I found it was dark purple like the advert said but not much else was correct and there were no AA checks for it. So with all this uncertainty I decided this wasn’t the car for me. There is a whole range of cars on Trademe, it is not uncommon to find an advert for a car that won’t start or a car that according to the owner spews blue smoke from the exhaust when running and makes conversation in the cars vicinity impossible due to a loud grinding noise and it will only cost you $1,500 (£750). But it will sell, unlike in the UK where it’s normally cheaper to sell your car for its scrap value when they get to this state. Someone will buy it and repair it and keep it running, I don’t know whether this is due to economics or the New Zealand culture but whatever its cause it’s good to see far less wastage going on, this might be the way the UK deal cars in a few years once the double dip recession hits.

Next step was back to the car garage to buy the two litre Primera, at least that way I had the security of a dealer sale rather than private. I got there just in time because they were putting it through a deal for $5,000 but because they had all ready offered it to me for $3,500 they honoured this offer and I now have a new car. It took nearly two months but I'm back on the road again, phew.

(My new wheels, the remainder of the car came with them)