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Buying cars in New Zealand

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When Steven and Serena returned from the states in September 2004 they came to stay with us until they sorted out their priorities. They were driving a rented car and wished to buy a cheap second hand car for temporary use. I took them to Turner’s auction to get a feel of the market trend for second hand cars in NZ. After seeing a nice car sold for $1750, they gave up the idea of bidding for the 1.5L Honda Civic at a reserved price of $5000. They have test driven the car earlier in the day and initially wanted to bid a maximum of $6,300 for it. The Civic was not from a car yard which has folded. It was imported by Turner’s directly from Japan just for this auction! It has never been registered in NZ.
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Fiat 125

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My next car in 1973 was a 12 year old Fiat 125 bought for 2.5K in Brunei. Its engine was very smooth and quiet on the high way. It had an external rubber timing belt which was ok for the clean roads of Italy and Europe; but entirely unsuitable for the dusty sand roads and dirt tracks of Borneo!
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Isuzu Trooper/Subaru 1.6

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Isuzu Trooper Soon, I swapped the Datsun for an Isuzu Trooper, 2.3 litre, 4x4 diesel jeep. That cost me another 25K. However it had plenty of oomph for towing the boats across logs and all, on the beach. The only minus point was, this jeep was bright yellow in colour and the diesel engine was very noisy! I used it for 10 years until I bought an old Subaru 1.6 litre station wagon in 1993 for 7K. That was supposed to become my retirement car. Kevin used the jeep to drive Pearl and Eugene to school.
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