Decided to make the move to New Zealand.

During the next yea it will take me to get all my visa stuff in order, I need to decide whether or not to take the 05 MCS. Under NZ law, the car will need to be transformed to comply with their traffic orientation. Crazy brits ...

Has anyone ever looked into swithing their left-side MINI to a right-sided one. Probably cost-prohibitive, but I'd hate to part with it already ...

Thanks.

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That's a tough one, as cars there go for a bloody* fortune. Probably cheaper to buy a used one in the UK and ship it there... Usually the master cylinder is an issue.
On the other hand, NZ is great! Good luck with move! (and conversion?)


*It cracks me up that on the MINI2 site, 'bloody' is censored...

 

Thanks, Eric.

Yeah, I priced out a MCS over there, and the base came in at around 35k (USD) or something ridicoulus like that. Surprisingly, there is a large MINI scene though, with a dealership in every decent-sized city.

As long as you buy Japanese (or other Asian), I think its affordable. Or ... I might go real British and get a LR Defender 110 TD5. Always craved one of those puppies ...

 

Sell your car here, then buy one there or import one from England. Better yet buy one in OZ. Shipping would be a whole lot cheaper too. I'd guess either option might turn out to be cheaper in the long run than trying to convert yours.

 

Yeah, they've got 'heaps' of second hand Japanese cars there.
Don't forget to look RIGHT at traffic circles!

 

We just got back from spending 2 months in NZ. There are TONS of minis there, mostly the old kind. We were on the south island, in Christchurch, and really didn't see that many "new" cars while we were there. Most people seem to drive "island cars" that are imported used. We drove an 89 mazda familia (a 323 here) which was more than enough to get us around - it's a small country! Have fun and say hi to all the kiwis! Can we come visit?

 

x2!

 

I thought that if the car was imported used then conversion wasn't necessary.

Anyways, my brother-in-law has a business building and maintaining race cars back home in NZ and I know they were looking into doing conversions of US cars to RHD because there is a niche market in NZ for for certain cars and trucks that only get sold over here. I could get them to look into it for you. Just PM me if you want to go that route and I'll see what I can find out.

Otherwise, stay british but go MG. My dad brought they new TF recently and loves it. If you perfer less reliability go for a Fiat, they're fun.

Otherwise, enjoy my fine nation and pray for a collapse in the Kiwi dollar, that way the money you get from selling the Mini here would almost buy you one over there.

 

Thanks all.

There will always be a couch for MINI visitors from the US. Christchurch is the plan right now, BTW.


Kiwi, I'll check with MINI NZ to see how much they would charge for the conversion, and will PM you if I need to get in touch with your brother. Thanks for offering. From doing some preliminary research, I believe the car needs to be in your posession for at least 5 years, to avoid the conversion. Not the case with the 05 MCS, unfortunately.

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We did see some LHD cars while we were there. I think it would be harder to learn to drive on the other side of the road if you were still sitting on the same side of the car! You'll have so much fun there you won't even think about what kind of car you're driving! Remember RIGHT of way!

 

Gidday. If you are emigrating to New Zealand you ARE allowed to import 1 left hand drive car as long as you do NOT sell it for 5 years. If its a newer MINI.. no worries! I have the email from NZ and found this web site.

http://www.landtransport.govt.nz/factsheets/12.html

I had decided to move back last year but decided to hold off due to family reasons. And I was not sure that NZ could maintain its strong economy and there were signs of a bubble in NZ Real Estate. Now I have made up my mind to move to Oz (Adelaide) and this time I will NOT be able to bring my MINI (Australia is stricter). I'm looking at aFiat Punto Grande Sport 1.9 Turbodiesel since MINIs are even more expensive in Oz. I did find a MINI like mine (cooper s cabrio) for pretty much what i paid stateside.. the NZ dollar has been declining of late.
Its now .61 (It was 70 back in November) and they expect it to slide to the mid 50s be end of 2006. Enjoy NZ. I LOVE NZ. But for the long term career wise, I'm afraid I'm better off in Oz (but hey its a quick flight to see mates in CChurch).

If you need further info, PM me privately.

PS MINIs are even more expensive in OZ.

 

Sweet!!!!

That's just what I needed.

Next time you get to CC, look for a DS MSC with it's steering wheel on the left. Now if I only could accelerate the emigration process ....

 

I saw new MINIs everyday in Auckland but it was not as prevalent, as say NY. I did not see many classic Minis...

Are you on the move2NZ.org web site or the NZ groups on yahoo?

 

Christchurch huh, home of the sheep ********
Actually it's a nice town but being Auckland born and raised I'm a biased North Islander.
The one really great thing that Christchurch has going for it is Fazzaz and Auto Restorations. Fazzaz is an excellent shop for car stuff and they do sell classics of all types while Auto Restorations does restorations etc. They might even be able to help out with a conversion.

 

[quote=Rastven]Christchurch huh, home of the sheep ********
quote]

Kia Ora!

Gasp! Thats whan an Ozzie would say about all kiwis .. woops...
And Aucklanders have this reputation outside of the city as being.. um.. never mind..

LOL.. Auck, CChurch.. don't care.. wish I was there right now! North/South, Tamaki, Wellie, Church.. love it all.. every blessed part of Aotearoa..

 

One thing to consider is that the NZ cars do not have to have cat converters by law. In lots of cases the cars sold new in NZ are more powerful than the cars sold in other countries due to the lack of emission gear. Don't know if NZ gets a different spec Mini than Australia, but it's something to look at. Also the nz dollar had been hovering around the high 60s against the US dollar and may well fall back to the low 60s (the days of being worth 50c to the dollar are long gone), so the price of a NZ new one could well be affordable.

 

It's actually .62/.61 right now. Its been that way since early this year. It was around .60 in March, my last trip to Godzone. Last time it was upper 60s/low 70 was late last year. Its been a steady decline - I track the NZ$ since I am looking to buy real estate (which is showing signs of cooling off).

Check this out.. they expect it to go down to the 50s. I'm waiting til then:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/st...ectid=10389432

New MINIs in NZ have cat converters. I drove one.

 

I can't see that though, even with the exchange rate.
A Cooper is 38K NZ BEFORE you start adding in packages and while I love my Mini there is no way I would be willing to pay something in the realm of 50+K.

I'd almost recommend buying a used 05 in the UK and shipping it. Better car, more options and you could even go.

Re Catalytic converters: they are required by law in NZ, since about 1986 but it's only been since 04 that there are have been emission standards in NZ "The Minister of Transport signed the Land Transport Vehicle Exhaust Emission Rule 2003 (33001), and it came into force from 1 January 2004 for light vehicles and from 2006 for heavy vehicles. It requires all vehicles entering New Zealand to be manufactured to an approved emissions standard from the United States, Europe, Japan or Australia."
Any belief that Kiwi vehicles are more powerful is a fallacy.

 

The only problem with buying a car in the UK is if someone is immigrating to NZ, they must provide proof that they have owned the car for 1 year in order to avoid duties. Otherwise they will have pay duties. Not sure if the duties will wipe out the savings.

 

I don't think that applies on a used car but I could be wrong.

 

UK cars are probably the most expensive vehicles anywhere. You would think it must be cheaper to buy NZ new due to the increasingly favourable exchange rate and lack of import fees etc, but then again they are kinda overpriced to begin with.
NZ cars were, for years - maybe 80s and early 90s - generally more powerful than the equivalent Australian model -Falcon, Commodore - simply due to the lack of emissions gear. Now with no local assembly anymore, we must get the same market cars as Australia.
I don't know where you found the info on the implementation of emissions rules, but as of late last year when I left NZ, cats were not legally required; infact, I took off the one on my imported Peugeot as it was getting blocked, and had no issues with compliance. NZ still has Diesel and petrol that are several shades less friendly than our neigbours, and the govt have been loath to bring in too stringent emissions rules as they believe the national fleet is too old still to make it viable. At least, that was the last I heard about the paradoxical equation of a Green leaning government and one of the world's least enforced emissions regimes.

 

My understanding is that New Zealand has always had some degree of emissions law on the books but it hasn't been enforced.
I found the piece I quoted on the LTSA site if I remember correctly.
As a kid I certainly don't remember the cars being higher spec than the Aussie counterparts but I do remember the collapse of the local assembly business for everyone except Ford and Mazda in the late 80's.