Kevin's cars

Kevin was driving a 1994 Toyota LE which mum bought for him at the Ellerslie car fair for 6.8K. He was using that for going to work in Auckland. Just buying cars alone is quite an expense for the Chin family in New Zealand! Total cost for 6 used cars was 54K, excluding running costs and maintenance. Generally, a car selling for less than 3K is not really worth buying here because the repair and maintenance costs are much higher than in Malaysia. 

Repair cost is nil for a brand new car; but the depreciations are higher! 10K, the first year and 8K the next! The best buy would still be a 5 year old Japanese import for around 12K. There is also a very wide choice here for that type of cars : Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Subaru, Hyundai, Ford, Holden and various imported European models, Citroen, Peugeot, VW, BMW, Volvo, Mercedes and Audi. They are all very cheap here! Buying a car is not a problem; but selling it, is sure difficult. Apparently, no one else in NZ share our taste for cars!

In the Muldoon years, no one can import a foreign car unless he has foreign currency held in an overseas bank! This favoured only the rich and the businessmen in New Zealand. For many years, most ordinary kiwis are condemned to drive very ancient Morris Minors and Austin Minis because not many people can afford to import new foreign cars. Second hand cars kept their value very well and there was hardly any depreciation. With the set up of Japanese assembly plants for the Toyota (Thames), Honda (Nelson)and Volkswagen (Invercargill), the price of new cars were still beyond the reach of many people until the era of the Japanese imports. These are reconditioned used cars imported from Japan.

The people in New Zealand started to buy these old cars in large numbers in the early nineties. This killed the market for British manufactured Morris and Austin in spite of the claim: New Zealand New is better! Everyone knew in their hearts that Japanese imports are better. This is in spite of all the malicious rumours spread by present owners of old British cars who are now stuck with cars which are destined for the scrap heap! The monopoly on new car ownership is now broken for ever.

Some new Korean imports are selling at less than $30K! The Hyundai Sonata is a very good buy indeed. A two year old, ex-lease was selling for just $15K, from Waikato Motor group, the Hamilton Volvo agent. We are now so spoilt for choice that it is now difficult to say which the best buy is!

In fact, both Kevin and Eugene are now riding bicycles and motor bikes in Australia! They have gone full circle back to push bikes.