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If you're moving from the states, you won't find much of a
difference in your selection of vehicles in New Zealand. All
the major brands are present, but you'll find you'll pay a
premium for a new car. The great thing is that many of the
used cars here are in fantastic shape. Every vehicle that is
imported overseas goes through a rigorous inspection. If
anything is questionable, it's replaced. Because most cars
come from Japan--and since most people spend their lives in
traffic jams while there--you can find a car over ten years
old with not a bit of rust on it with less than 48K miles on
the engine. There are some differences in registration
compared to the states. First off, your prayers have been
answered: There is no DMV. That's right. No more waiting in
line for hours during your lunch to register your plates. In
fact, license plates come with all used cars in New Zealand.
It's a one time deal to register plates. After that, if you
sell your car, you pass on your plates and simply change over
ownership in writing. Easy.
Need insurance? This is the best part. The car insurance
company in New Zealand is called AMI. You can usually find a
couple in any city. Anyways, after purchasing a car, simply
walk over to one of their locations and sit down with a
representative. It took Jeannine and I less than 10 minutes to
setup our insurance. That stuff would take weeks back home.
Also, expect to pay A LOT less for insurance. The average
price for the year, for full coverage, is less than $250.00
US. Shit, we used to pay almost that much per month back home.
Here's something important though: Remember to bring a copy of
your insurance record with you. AMI will reduce your yearly
insurance rate almost 40% if this information is available. If
you do forget, simply have your insurance company mail you a
copy. Even after you buy insurance at the normal rate
(possibly $500US), once you get the insurance report to them,
they'll drop your rate and refund you the difference
you paid. Nice. So how much money should you allocate to
buying a car? Well, 3k US will get you an excellent deal at a
used car place. Of course, you could always go to a private
seller as well, but J and I found it was worth whatever markup
we paid to have the dealer take care of all the registration
details. Plus, we received an excellent warranty. One less
thing to worry about.
One other thing, if you do happen to get a parking ticket
while you're here ($5US), you can simply pay for it at the
post office. It's kind of a jack of all trades here.
Good luck hunting. If there's anything not mentioned here
that you're curious about, simply pass on an
email.
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