For a ‘wee Island nation tucked way down near the bottom of the world’ we’ve certainly been able to import some amazing road – let alone pure racing – cars.
And by the look of some of the Facebook sites I keep an eye on (WSImportsnz is a good one if you’re into Japanese Domestic Market exotica, for example) and by the size (full-page) and frequency of the ads in the Petrolhead newspaper from Logistics companies eager and willing to ship your ‘barn-find’ 57 Chev from the US ‘to your door’ here in NZ, it would appear that;
1) Japanese performance cars from the md 1980s to the late 1990s are the latest ‘must-have’ fad on the US car scene with competition at the various auction sites in Japan sending the price of ‘anything old, rare, interesting or ‘Fast’n Furious’ sky high, virtually overnight.
2) In saying that there are still obviously plenty of desirable old America cars for sale for reasonable money in the ‘States, and
2) There is still an enthusiastic market here in NZ for what I will call ‘American Graffiti cars’ – despite the movie being based on the goings on in a rural Californian town 59 years ago (‘where were you, in ‘62’ was the promo line in the poster after-all) and being first released 10 years later (in August 1972) or 49 years ago.
Such is the on-going appeal of timeless US classics like the sinister matt-black ’55 Chev that Harrison Ford’s character drove, the bright yellow 32 Ford Deuce coupe of local hero John Milner, or even the humble 1958 Ford Edsel that belonged to head cheerleader Laurie Henderson, that a new generation of ‘car nuts’ is still apparently aspiring to seek out, import, get it running and certed here then …..head off to Beach Hop in it!
Which, when you think about it. kind of makes a mockery of all the anti-car/oil is going to run out/we’re doomed, doomed etc, drivel (some of our) politicians appear to be feeding the local news media.
I know, I’ve read several doom/gloom pieces in local newspapers and news magazines over the years which supposedly back up the notion that ‘the kids today’ (and spare me, we must now be up to Gen Z or perhaps even Gen AAA) are simply ‘no longer interested’ in cars, motorcycles, scooters or other means of personal transport, and want nothing more than a cheap place to bunk down and a Smartphone with which they can choose (or not as the case may be) to interact with the real or virtual worlds.
So, who, I would counter, is buying into this classic ‘American’ car culture dream? Why, if ‘the kids’ are no longer interested in cars and getting around in them has not the arse fallen out of the original greasy hair/beer-bellied ‘hot rod’ market as the OGs who created our own ‘scene’ the 1960s and early 1970s start falling off their perches.
The reason, as I see it anyway is simple…simple economics. Our’s – and I really don’t think it matters which sector or group you are talking about either – is a market of scarcity.
Sure, as PM Jacinda Ardern memorably reminded us as he first CODID-19 Lockdown kicked in a year ago now no one needs to go hungry here. We can – and regularly do – produce food for Africa.
What we never seem to have managed, however, is make enough real money from our exports to build a strong and resilient economy to not only satisfy the needs and wants of the few, but also the many.
I learned about our market of scarcity, when I was doing some media work – a few years ago now – for one of the country’s smaller but probably most profitable motorcycle importers.
Bob’ (Not his real name) used to find my myriad new and innovative ways to spend ‘his’ money endlessly funny; preferring to take what I always considered the derisory number of bikes the factory offered him each year and sell them – usually at a price premium to boot – to cashed up ‘men of a certain age’ seduced by all the pre-launch marketing hype produced ex-factory by the company’s own slick marketing machine….and, ahhhhemmm, distributed around the local media ‘traps’ by my good self.
Of course, because ‘Bob’ was effectively able to (pretty much) pre-sell every new bike he got from the factory, he was regularly the toast of ‘The Chairman’ back at ‘Head Office’ and I can recall writing up several ‘press releases’ over the 10 or so years I was involved with ‘Bob,’ celebrating NZ’s hallowed place at the top of the company’s ‘per capita’ sales charts.
I can also remember my good friend Campbell (which actually IS his real name!) arriving back from a riding trip to the US’s West Coast telling me wide-eyed about a sports bike ‘Supermarket in LA where each Saturday the ‘sales dudes’ would compete with each other to see who could sell the most bikes that day.
On finding out about the ‘game’ shop (or rather, ‘site’) management decided to lend a hand, with TV and Blimp ads advising of the special deal/price/discount in the days leading up to the ‘sales event’ and – after successive days when they ran low on inventory, sought unsold stock from other dealers to make sure that demand never actually exceeded supply.
Which historically has been the opposite here. Because…our’s is a market of scarcity.
I used to harangue ‘Bob’ loud and long about how many more bikes he might reasonable sell – and therefore how much more money he would stand to make – if one year he raised merry hell about the rubbish number of bikes the factory allocated him and demanding more – on pain of taking his business elsewhere.
I reckoned – conservatively – that we could pre-sell at least another 25 bikes and if ‘Bob’ was prepared to invest in a little ad campaign of his own I figured we could easily ‘shift another 20 or so units over the next 12 months.
Ultimately of course ‘Bob’ settled for the status quo and I – literally – drifted away from the bike scene.
I still haunt TradeMe of course but have resigned myself to having to import the ‘retirement project’ I have been promising to buy myself since 1974 – a cool little Kawasaki KS 125 – from the US or UK.
Here, you see, because of our ‘market of scarcity’ the things were like Rocking Horse Poo when they were new, and by the time I had saved up a deposit the Kawasaki importer had sold his last one – and chose not to bring in anymore.
Thousands of the things were sold in the US between 1972 and 1975, however. In fact, the one I have got closest to making an offer on in 2020 was ex US anyway.
Whether I ever get to act on the ‘dream’ of flying up there, buying a running bike to ride back to California then ship ‘home’ is a moot point.
Either way I’ll need a good shipping agent, so, where’s that copy of Petrolhead, a little bit of research (long) before the fact, never went astray!
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