The automotive industry in New Zealand supplies a market which has always had one of the world's highest car ownership ratios. At the dealership level they have maintained their old retail chains in spite of the establishment of the many new independent businesses built since the 1980s by specialists in used imports from Japan. Toyota entered into direct competition with those used-import businesses refurbishing old Toyotas from Japan and selling them through their own dealers as a special line. The nation's car fleet is accordingly somewhat older than in most developed countries.
New Zealand no longer assembles passenger cars. Assembly plants closed after tariff protection was removed and distributors found it cheaper to import cars fully assembled. Cars had been assembled at a rate nearing 100,000 a year in 1983, but with the country's economic difficulties their numbers dropped sharply. Towards the end of the decade the removal of various restrictions as part of the nation's restructuring of its economy made available low-priced old used cars from Japan. These used cars met the local need for high ownership levels in a financially straitened world but since that time continue to arrive in such large numbers they substantially increase the average age of the nation's fleet.
Toyota and Ford dominate the new vehicle market but there were more new Mazda cars than Holden cars sold in 2018 while Ford and Nissan cars were no longer among the volume sellers. They were overtaken by Hyundai, Kia and Suzuki. Holden cars are sliding towards Ford sales levels in 2019.Registration data 1975 onwards, Motor Industry Association, accessed 24 August 2019 The small home market—the size of a large city—and distance from potential export customers combined with first-world pay rates against the formation of any significant indigenous manufacturers. Only small boutique kit and replica car firms were able to survive. They produce original kit and replica cars using locally made car bodies and imported componentry for both the local and international markets. Several of these, while small in size, are noted for the quality of their workmanship.
First automobiles
The industry began with the importation in 1898 of two Carl Benz cars from Paris by William McLean. Apart from a few early attempts to build complete cars all chassis were imported. Local coachbuilders, out-priced, finally disappeared in the 1920s though not without representations to government. A few moved to assembly of complete cars or to making bus, truck and trailer bodies, sometimes both. New Zealand assembly of American CKD packs got properly under way in the 1920s, English CKD packs a full decade later.
McLean's motor cars arrived in Wellington from Sydney by the SS Rotomahana on 19 February 1898. They were a Benz Petrolette and a Benz Lightning.New Zealand in Review: an illustrated digest of interesting information, historical, geographical and otherwise, relating to New Zealand, James Berry page 59 After McLean's Benz cars were imported it was almost two years before the next four-wheel car was imported.
A three-wheeler arrived in Auckland in November 1898 for Messrs George Henning and WM Service. At least three three-wheelers are said to have been imported in 1899 including a De Dion for Acton Adams of ChristchurchLocal and General, Star (Canterbury) 21 September 1899 page 3 and another for Robert and Frederick Maunsell of Masterton,Editorial Mataura Ensign 14 September 1899 page 2 sons of the missionary. All three arrived in September 1899, with Acton Adams's vehicle being involved in New Zealand's first motor vehicle accident two months later.Accidents and fatalities, Star (Canterbury) 23 November 1899 page 3
Young Auckland engineer Arthur Marychurch returned from England 12 months later with a four-wheeled Star, which he sold after a few weeks to Skeates and Bockaert. They took up the Star agency and sold this first car to Christchurch grocers Wardell Bros.First Car Brought to Dominion New Zealand Herald 28 December 1935 page 9
The three motor-tricycles were followed in 1900Carterton's first motor car Manawatū Standard 19 January 1901 page 4 by a Darracq and a Locomobile steam car along with a Pope-Toledo, Eagle, Argyll, Oldsmobile and Daimler. In 1903, 153 cars and motorbikes were imported.New Zealand Official Year Book 1904 page 175 Cars in 1903 cost more than twice the average annual income meaning the market was limited to the wealthy.John McCrystal, 100 years of motoring in New Zealand, Hodder Moa Beckett Publishers Limited, 2003, Petrol or Benzine was not readily available except as a lighting fuel for certain lamps and in some instances for sufficient quantity owners had to order it from Sydney, Australia. By 1925 imports had increased to over 20,000 cars a year.Motor vehicle imports Evening Post 3 April 1926 page 19
Early indigenous cars If steam-powered vehicles are counted, the first vehicles were believed to be a steam buggy constructed by a Mr Empson of Christchurch in 1870 and a steam buggy imported from Edinburgh by John Gillies of Dunedin, also in 1870.New Zealand Motor and Cycle Journal 25 April 1912 page 73 There is no information about Empson's vehicle. The first traction engine, an 8 hp Reading Iron Works traction engine, had only been imported three years earlier.Latest Telegrams Timaru Herald 17 April 1867 page 2 Gillies steam buggy was more probably a Thomson Road Steamer and not a steam buggy.Editorial Otago Daily Times 21 November 1870 page 2 Gillies sold the Thomson to the Canterbury Provincial government in 1871 for £1,200.Thomson Road Steamer, Press, Volume XVIII, Issue 2444, 28 February 1871 page 3 These were followed by professor Robert Julian Scott's 1881 steam buggy, which was the first indigenous designed self propelled vehicle in New Zealand.
There is debate about who made the first petrol driven vehicle. Timaru engineer Cecil Wood made a petrol engine in 1897, but later made an unsubstantiated claim to have created and driven a three-wheel vehicle in 1896 followed by a four-wheel vehicle in 1898.Wings over Waiotahi, Radcliffe, Avon Press, 1997, page 55-57, His first independently confirmed vehicles date from 1901.
On 3 May 1898 a Nelson newspaper reported that a Mr Sewell of the Upper Buller had constructed a motor car and was to drive it to Wakefield that week.Untitled, Colonist, Nelson, New Zealand 3 May 1898 page 2 A letter to The Evening Posts editor later that year stated that there were two engineering firms in Wellington constructing motor car engines.The Motor Car Question Evening Post 16 July 1898 page 2 Whether Wood, Sewell, or the engineering firms made a roadworthy vehicle at this time is not known as there were no further articles about them.
The first New Zealand designed and constructed automobile known to have run was made by Frederick Dennison. It was a motor tricycle reported in the local newspaper on 8 May 1900.Local and general Star 8 May 1900 page 3 The article stated that Dennison intended to convert the tricycle to a four-wheel motor-car. He did so and drove it from Christchurch to Oamaru in July 1900.First New Zealand Built Motor Car Otago Witness 12 July 1900 page 48 It was the only one made and was destroyed by fire on its return journey. A replica of this car was completed and driven in June 2000 in celebration of its first journey.Rona Adshead and Rex Murry, Replicar, Square One Press, Dunedin, 2002,
This was followed by several models constructed by Wood between 1901 and 1903, Alexander Reid of Stratford's steam cars from 1903 to 1906, Gary Methven of Dunedin's petrol driven car, Pat and Thomas Lindsay of Timaru's steam cars in 1903, and Topliss Brothers of Christchurch's car in 1904.The Veteran Years of Motoring in New Zealand, Pam MacLean and Brian Joyce, AH & AW Reed, 1971, A Blenheim engineer, John Birch, constructed the Marlborough in 1912 and several cars named Carlton's between 1922 and 1928 at Gisborne. One of these is still in existence with the Gisborne vintage car club.
Level of car ownership
The number of cars owned per 1,000 persons
1924: USA 143, Canada 77, New Zealand 71, Australia 23, United Kingdom 14, France 11Modern Motoring Auckland Star 17 March 1925 page 11 1967: New Zealand 293, Canada 283, Australia 274, Sweden 250. 2011: Canada 662, Sweden 520, Australia 731, New Zealand 708. (years:— Canada 2014, Sweden 2010, Australia 2015, New Zealand 2011)
Impact of legislation Government legislation has always had a major impact on the New Zealand industry. The first automobile legislation was the McLean Motor Car Act 1898 rushed through by McLean just before his cars were unloaded.Local and general Evening Post 24 May 1898 page 4 It legalised the operation of motor vehicles, providing they were lit after dark, and did not go faster than 20 kilometres (12 miles) per hour. The Motor Cars Regulation Act 1902 followed. A tariff did apply to cars and car parts brought into New Zealand, although with McLean's cars there was some initial confusion as to what rate might apply. In 1906 local coach makers sought an increase in the tariff to 50 percent for completely built up vehiclesTariff Revision, the coach building trade Evening Post 5 April 1906 page 5 and in 1907 a 20 percent tariff was introduced on cars that arrived in New Zealand already assembled to protect them but there remained no duty on chassis.
America's domination Higher duties were imposed on imports from countries outside the British Empire.From Detroit to Canada Poverty Bay Herald 4 May 1916 page 5 Nevertheless, new cars registered during 1917 show rather more than 90 percent of New Zealand's cars originated in North America During World War I the tariff on car bodies was reduced to 10 percent but the same rate was also imposed on the previously free chassis. Import statistics of the time provide different quantities for bodies and more numerous chassis no mention of complete cars. Unlike in Australia local coachbuilders lost business in the early 1920s. Some of the bigger firms ended up producing only commercial vehicles, truck cabs, trailers but mainly bus bodies, for example New Zealand Standard Motor Bodies (Munt Cottrell) in Petone, Steel Bros in Christchurch. Some simply became motor retailers themselves like Auckland's Schofields in Newmarket.
Before World War I motoring was reserved for the prosperous. Roads in cities and towns may have been very dusty but were smooth and well-formed. Townsfolk were on the whole satisfied with their English cars designed for the same conditions, built with care to high engineering standards but with only lip-service to interchangeability of parts. They required regular expensive maintenance at short intervals. American cars were built in large quantities and thus cheaper, designed by much better engineers and built for bad surfaces and to cope with irregular maintenance which might be hard to find even in their homeland.
Right through until World War II English manufacturers strove to present the colonies with their Special Colonial models intended to be easier to care for, to be sturdier and with adequate ground clearance but without real success in South Africa, Australia or New Zealand. The great success of the original Morris Oxford arose from its ease of driving and its reliability, both attributed to all the mechanical components being of U.S. design if not provenance. On the whole American cars were better more modern cars and much cheaper and much better suited to New Zealand conditions.Motor pioneers in the roadless backblocks Evening Post 7 December 1912 page 12