Cars week: To buy a car in NZ was once REALLY hard and REALLY expensive

Cars week: To buy a car in NZ was once REALLY hard and REALLY expensive

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Fact of the day, day day day day. Yeah, do
do do do do do do do do do do
do do do do do doo doo doo. It's car week.
At fact of the day. Damien sent me in this
one good ada and he said, you could probably work

(00:22):
a little bit of land Rover chat into this. Oh yeah,
was it not impossible? That's my specialty. Did you know?
At once by a time in New Zealand it was
very hard to buy a brand new car. Oh okay,
So they didn't we make cars here, so no, we
assembled cars. Oh okay. Oh yeah. So when cars kind

(00:43):
of got invented, the government invented a twenty percent introduced
a twenty percent tariff, which is an important tax on cars,
and then that gets passed on to the consumer and
then they take a little bit of a cut because obviously,
if you're importing a car, local coach builders and car
assemblers aren't getting that business. Yeah, so that's the idea
of tariffs. Yeah. During the First World War was taken
down to ten percent, and then from nineteen twenty four

(01:05):
on they were imported assembled rather than unassembled. But then
in the thirties it increased again. So if it arrived unassembled,
the tariff was five percent. If it arrived assembled, it
was fifteen percent. What if you just left off one
wheel technically say that's unassembled and some assembly required on
the box. Yeah, like it literally just puts something on

(01:28):
and you're like finding something wrong. That was easy. Yeah,
I don't feel like that even qualifies as some assembly required.
So that was just for British cars because of course
of our ties to the Brits. But if it was
coming from anywhere else in Europe or America, it was
fifty percent tariff on unassembled and sixty percent for assembled. Wow.
So basically to get it became quite like an exclusive

(01:51):
club to be in to get a car because of
the tariffs because the tariffs were so high. So we
held on to cars a lot longer. Even on unassembled
ones that came here and were assembled. It was you know,
they wouldn't bring the parts in unless they knew they
could sell them. When what years was this was years
was this? So this was reintroduced in the nineteen thirties
and then New Zealand car assembly like there's lots of

(02:14):
Like my land Rover that I inherited from a granddad
was made in New Zealand, assembled in New Zealand. It's
a New Zealand And ride. That was the case with
it all around the world. They're just flat pack like
ike it for land Rovers, yeah right, and that tripped
around the world and everywhere local would put a little
bit of a local spin on it. Land Rovers and
Spain and Portugal and stuff are called Santana's named after

(02:37):
legendary guitar Carlos Santana. Not at all, but so they
put their own to the local spin night to get
around these tariffs of just importing other cars in the
massive tariffs. So if you wanted a brand new car
from overseas, you had to pretty much go on a
waiting list and then they'd send it over. So what
were they doing is walking around horses, lots of horses,

(02:59):
lots of carriages, locally assembled ones. But then that was
also that also had a tariff attached, so second hand
cars and then people just held on to them, and
that's why people knew how to fix their cars. Yeah,
because if you open a manual in a modern car,
it's like make sure your tires have got air in them,
and you're like, thanks, manual, and I've got this old

(03:20):
manual for my old Land Drover and it's like if
you knew to adjust the crank timing, I'm like, I'm
not touching that right Yeah Rob not Ye. So today's
fact Today is once more a time to buy a
brand new car in New Zealand. It was a very
challenging and very expensive task. In fact of the day,

(03:41):
day day day day do do do do do do
do do do do do do do do do do
do do do do do do dods