# Take car to Christchurch??



## joannewalker33 (Nov 19, 2012)

Another question...we really want to take our car( which we have had only about 6 weeks) to Christchurch with us! Does anyone know what to do and the costs involved, is it worth it??


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## escapedtonz (Apr 6, 2012)

If its new as in brand new and you intend to keep many years, Id say yes, ship it over, but you are looking at £1500 - £2500 depending on the size to ship it, plus the costs for Maf inspection/cleaning, NZTA inspection, warrant of fitness and registration which are payable when it arrives. Maybe budget another £500 for that.
You must also already be here when it arrives or nominate someone already here to be responsible for it.
Takes 8-12 weeks to ship.

If its nearly new - under 18 months old and you intend keeping many years, I'd also recommend the same.

Any older don't bother as it won't be worth it. 
Sell it in UK and buy one here there's thousands on Trademe or dealer forecourts.

IMPORTANT: You have to declare how long you have owned the car to NZ Customs and provide evidence to support this. 
If you have owned the car less than 12 months - doesn't matter how old it is, you will be stung for Import GST (NZ Tax) of 15% of its new value in NZ and that will be more than its value in UK!

Also last but not least you must sign a declaration that you won't sell the car on within 2 years of its arrival.

You really need to do your sums and get some shipping quotes.
Like I said if its brand new or nearly new and you are gonna keep it years and years its probably worth it.
Also think about the car itself. 
It will be UK spec, not NZ spec so in Miles Per Hour and Miles on the odometer instead of Km's.
May be difficult to regulate speed to the speed limits in Km's and there's many a speed camera van!
You won't be able to transfer any warranty from UK as NZ manufacturers won't honour it here as the car isn't NZ spec.
Unless any sat nav is TomTom based you won't be able to buy software or a disc which will allow it to work on NZ roads.


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## joannewalker33 (Nov 19, 2012)

Thats great thank you we have now made up our mind that we will be selling it in England...it is a new car but we have been quoted £6k insurance to ship, plus the GST which will stand as we only bought it 6 weeks ago (didnt know about nz then!) Its a lot of money especially with everything else...
Thanks again and have a wonderful xmas x


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## escapedtonz (Apr 6, 2012)

joannewalker33 said:


> Thats great thank you we have now made up our mind that we will be selling it in England...it is a new car but we have been quoted £6k insurance to ship, plus the GST which will stand as we only bought it 6 weeks ago (didnt know about nz then!) Its a lot of money especially with everything else...
> Thanks again and have a wonderful xmas x


Yeah we were in the same boat having a new car and not owning it long enough.
We knew we were going to emigrate at some point but had been waiting for the visa's for so long it got to the point where we decided we couldn't keep life on hold any longer. We needed to offload a car that was starting to give us problems and buy new and hope that it all worked out.
We bought in June 2011 brand new and the car, model we picked was specifically to last us years in NZ.
Got the visa's 8 weeks later out of the blue, but decided we wanted to emigrate sooner rather than later so booked the flights etc for the following 1st March 12 thinking that we only had to own the car 6 months before it became GST free.
Was a bit of a bombshell when the car shipping company said we would have to pay the GST, or store it in UK for 3 months before shipping it out, then there was the pain of trying to source the certificate of conformity that has to be handed to NZTA.

The shipping was £2500 plus the extra's taking it up to around £3000 to get it on the road in NZ. 
Luckily we negotiated a bargain deal for the car being a pre-reg demo. Should have been £32000 new but with 3000 miles on the clock and only ever used by the dealer principle we landed it for £23500 and they gave us a couple of grand more than we expected for the trade in so all in all we reckoned paying out £3000 to take it with us still meant we were quids in...........until the GST bombshell - that amounted to another £6000 on top - worse because the exchange rate had taken such a dive at the time - Ouch!!!
That money would have and did pay for our household shipping so it was a no brainer - the new car had to go.
Had it 7 months and used it plentifully - fought hard to get £19500 for it just before we emigrated so it cost us £4000 in the end but had plenty of use out of it so not that bad really.
I had a 6 year old car so just sold that to family for what it was worth.
Luckily when we arrived my new company gave us a hire car for 2 weeks to help us out which was great. 
Didn't take long to find a used car for me as there are many dealerships in NZ.
We managed to find 2 decent cars using the money we got for our cars in England which worked well.
Fuel is cheaper here - currently around £1.10 litre petrol and £0.75 litre diesel, but if you buy a diesel you also have to fork out a diesel levy charge on top of the road tax which works out around $500 for 10000 km.
There is no levy charge on petrol cars.
Road tax is $278 per year for cars but double for motorbikes under 600cc, and higher for motorbikes over 600cc around the $600 a year mark.
Car insurance isn't compulsory so you could opt not to have any so zero cost but obviously you take the risk of having to stump up the cost of repairs to any other persons property if an accident is proved your fault as well as your own car repairs.
Car Insurance is half the price of the UK so I'd recommend going comprehensive.
Car servicing isn't that expensive and there are many deals on GrabOne.

No cars are made here. 
All of them are imports, but there are 2 types - NZ New which are cars made to NZ spec (don't confuse the term "New" as all imports to NZ spec are called NZ New regardless of age) and the others which are just imports - mainly from Japan.
NZ New seem to attract a higher price and don't give too many problems. Should come with an English handbook, a service record and a manufacturers warranty if its under 3 years old.
The Imports are cheaper but come without a handbook or one that is in Japanese, no service history or manufacturers warranty even if there's any left as the NZ manufacturers won't honor them, will tend to have some Japanese buttons on the dash or in the digital read outs, the sat nav will be Japanese and unusable and the stereo won't work well / difficult to understand / bandwidth problem on the radio needing a band expander to be fitted.

Don't you just love a bit of adventure!!!

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