If you’re staying in New Zealand longer-term, buying a car opens up the best parts of the country. You’ll have more flexibility on where and when you go, hit up spots off of the Intercity route, and often can add camping to your experience.
Buying a car in New Zealand can also add challenges and stress that you could have otherwise avoided. Not only with the stress of buying and selling a car to begin with, but with any unexpected breakdowns or maintenance that pops up. If you’re tight on time (if you’re visiting for two months, let’s say), delays can have a bigger impact on what you can do and see in New Zealand.
Expected Maintenance and Costs
If you plan on buying a car in New Zealand for a full year of travel, these are the costs that any car owner should expect to pay. If you will only have the car for a few months, it will depend on your car maintenance dates.
Change of Ownership
Unless you’re fortunate enough to get a New Zealand driver’s license, change of ownership can’t be processed online. If both the buyer and seller have NZ driver’s licenses, they can both submit the forms online and it’s immediate.
Lucky them.
For the rest of us, the easiest thing to do is go into an AA office or NZ Post. When I bought my car, we went to an AA Office and I paid NZ$9.12 as the buyer to process the change of ownership. We received immediate confirmation and I got my ownership card right away.
When I sold my car, we went to an NZ Post and the buyer didn’t have to pay a thing! It’s the same process and you get the ownership card right away, but for free. Save a bit of extra money and go to an NZ Post. They also tend to be less hectic with shorter lines. NZ Post all the way.
Registration
Every year, car owners need to update their car registration (rego). You have the choice to pay for any number of months up to a full year rather than being required to pay for a full year up front. However, while this may save you money in the short-term, it will be easier to sell your call later if your rego isn’t on the verge of expiration.
The only catch here is that they will mail you your new rego card to put on your windscreen. So you need to coordinate when to submit your new rego to ensure you’re somewhere with access to mail services. Fortunately, you should be able to update your rego early without problem.
Warrant of Fitness
Another yearly maintenance requirement is the Warrant of Fitness (WoF). If you’re lucky and only owning a car for a few months, you may be able to avoid this altogether. But for a full year, you will definitely need to get a WoF done at some point.
WoF is an annual inspection to ensure that each car is road worthy and not a danger to others on the road. They check everything: your wiper blades, brake pads, oil levels, seatbelts, tires, and more. If you don’t pass, typically mechanics will quote you how much you can pay them to fix it with them or you can try to fix it yourself and attempt to pass again. You may have to pay for each WoF inspection until you pass. Oftentimes if you have the same mechanic fix the issue, they’ll waive the cost of a second WoF.
Most mechanics offer WoF services, but prices can vary greatly depending on where in New Zealand you are and which mechanic you go to. On average, they’re around NZ$50, but can go as high as NZ$100. When it’s your time, I highly recommend calling around to several mechanics in your area and getting quotes so you can price compare.
Car Insurance
Legally, car insurance is not required for car owners in New Zealand. Would I recommend driving around without it? Absolutely not.
I, and most people, got insurance coverage from AA Insurance. You can go into one of their offices and talk to an agent, or you can get a quote and sign up online. Unless you’re trying to do something really fancy, I’d recommend doing it online. So much faster!
There are two levels of insurance: third party and comprehensive. I’m not an expert here, so make sure you read the fine print as you select your coverage. In essence, third party coverage will cover the cost of any damages incurred on a third party (aka the vehicle of the other party involved). It won’t cover the cost of fixing your own car. Comprehensive insurance covers both.
Again not an expert, do your own research. But why would you choose anything but comprehensive?
Top tip: if you don’t have a set home base, select a hostel off the beaten path for the address where your car is parked most often. The price of insurance is based on many factors, including how risky your “home” is for car break-ins. Try out a few while looking at quotes online and see which gives you the best deal. Make sure your delivery settings are set to electronic so you actually get your account updates!
AA Membership
Once you have your insurance coverage, you can call AA and get an annual AA Membership for a discounted rate. This includes discounted costs at AA mechanics and 6 free call outs a year. A call out includes things like a flat tire, dead battery, or any other car breakdown. Interestingly, AA Membership covers a person, not the car. So if your friend has a membership and you don’t, your friend could come to your car and use one of their call-outs on your car.
Friends let friends benefit from AA membership.
I never got an AA Membership because I realized insurance holders got a discount too late in the year to justify it for me. If I did it again, I would probably get a membership just to be on the safe side.
The Value of a Pre-Purchase Inspection
Let’s be honest, backpackers don’t tend to buy newer car models in New Zealand. We go for the cheap, road tested cars that won’t notice an extra dent or two. This often means there’s problems lurking close to the surface, ready to pop up when you least want them to.
Most mechanics (AA included) offer pre-purchase car inspections for between NZ$100-$200. Most car owners are open to buyers asking to do pre-purchase inspections. If they’re not, that’s a sign that there’s definitely some wrong with that car they don’t want you to know about. The cost for this inspection falls on the buyer, so it’s definitely an investment at the beginning (especially if you end up getting this far with more than one car).
However, looking back, I really wish I had done one when I was buying my car in New Zealand. That ~NZ$180 I didn’t spend could have easily helped me avoid several hundred dollars of future maintenance. Whereas the WoF just tells you if a car passes minimum safety standards, a pre-purchase inspection will inform you of any anticipated problems and how much those would likely cost.
Regular Oil Change and Servicing
If you plan to really put the kilometers on your car like I did, prepare to pay for at least one oil change/service. Servicing is recommended every year or every 10000 kilometers, whichever comes first. Because I ended up putting on at least 25000 km, I had to get my oil changed and car serviced twice during the year.
Sometimes this means they find additional problems that need to be addressed. This happened during my first servicing when the mechanic said my brake pads were worn to nothing and my air filter was essentially useless. One cost became many very quickly.
They are also surprisingly expensive! In the US, it is fairly easy to find somewhere to do an inexpensive oil change and call it a day. However, in New Zealand, it seems like most mechanics don’t allow someone to just get an oil change. In order to get your oil changed, you need to get a full servicing which doesn’t come cheap.
Highly recommend shopping around for these! Prices and offerings vary widely at each mechanic.
Unexpected Maintenance
This is what really separates the strong from the weak. This is definitely one of the biggest considerations if you’re thinking of buying a car in New Zealand. I never met anyone who owned a car there who didn’t have something break or need unexpected maintenance. Myself included.
New Zealand roads are often unsealed, filled with potholes, and sometimes just outright gravel. Ideally, you and the other drivers on the road drive to the conditions and avoid gravel rockets shooting around. However, most kiwis suddenly lose all patience behind the wheel. My car definitely got a few new dings and dents from other drivers gunning it on a gravel road and flinging rocks around.
I was fortunate to avoid this, but one of the most common and costly car problems is a cracked windscreen. You can add windscreen protection to your insurance for an extra ~NZ$10 a month (depending on your insurance provider). At first, this sounds like a huge financial commitment (especially considering my monthly insurance was only NZ$31 a month). But then you realize a new windscreen can cost over NZ$1500 easily without coverage. Suddenly an extra NZ$120 a year doesn’t seem so bad.
Many backpackers with cars are putting the kilometers on their cars like nobody’s business. I myself added more than 25000 kilometers in the odometer. This can put a lot of wear on the car and cause more maintenance than a casual car user. We’re also taking these cars on more windy roads and gravel more often too. It’s easy for something to shift out of place or dent something it shouldn’t.
All The Ways My Car Made Me Suffer
This is not to scare you away from buying a car in New Zealand! This is the universal reality of car ownership: things can and probably will go wrong. To give you an example of what you could expect and provide some context for the costs outlined in the next section, here’s an outline of all my car’s problems from the year I owned it.
When I bought the car, one tail light was out and one tire was bald. It was easy and cheap to replace a tail light the next day. It was less easy and cheap to buy two new tires (you can’t just replace one unfortunately) and have them installed. There may have also been an incident on my first day driving that caused me to lose one of the side mirrors into a street gutter…
Don’t worry, I did manage to grab the mirror and pop it back in with minimal (but not certainly not zero) embarrassment.
While I was working in Christchurch, my car started doing this fun thing when I would turn on the blinker and all the car lights would turn off. And I do mean all of them. I didn’t really notice this problem until I was driving at night for my work shifts and, shocker, needed my lights to see in the dark. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really put that fix off so I paid for an inspection, a new indicator shaft, and had more tail lights replaced that the broken system burnt out.
Alright This One’s On Me…
Towards the end of my year, I was getting really fast and loose with off-roading with my car. Honestly, it got me through so many tough spots without breaking down. I was getting too confident. I ended up driving it onto 90 Mile Beach because you have to, right? Well I eventually got onto the beach…after getting stuck in the sand and having to be towed out by a kind local. In the process, the front splash guard on my car was ripped in half and I had to get the old one removed and replaced with a new one.
The mechanic who removed the dangling half of the cover that was still attached (and for free, bless him) mentioned something under there was dented. I don’t know what and he didn’t seem too concerned so I proceeded to ignore that information. He recommended avoiding future off-roading and I said, “have you seen the potholes on these streets?” We had a good laugh, bemoaning specific potholes in the area, and I felt like such a local.
Writing it all out makes it seem small (to me in hindsight at least), but many of these problems came at a (literal) high cost and several very stressful days each.
These were the issues I dealt with, but every car and driver is going to experience a different set of challenges. My friend had to have his entire alternator replaced and the mechanic had his car for a month. Several friends had cracked windshields (again, miracle I avoided this, to be honest). Just be prepared to take a few days to get these issues sorted and don’t be afraid to call around to multiple mechanics to compare quotes. Have I recommended this enough?
My Cost Breakdown
For full transparency and so that you can see a real-life cost breakdown, I’ll be sharing my exact cost and expenses for my car over the year I owned it.
A quick note about the initial cost of my car: I bought it at an awful time for buyers. A series of floods and a cyclone just swept through the Auckland region where I was buying. So many cars were flooded and damaged which tanked supply and drove up demand and price. If I had thought about it in the long-term, I maybe would’ve waited for the market to even out. Or at least felt more comfortable trying to negotiate the price. But alas, I did not so I paid way more than the car was worth.
| Purchase | Price (NZ$) |
|---|---|
| Bought for: | $3750 |
| Change of ownership at AA: | $9.12 |
| Light bulb replacement: | $15 |
| 2 new tires and installatino: | $391.10 |
| Indicator shaft (initial inspection plus replacement part and labor total): | $465.79 |
| Registration/license label for 12 months: | $103.68 |
| First servicing + new brake pads + new filter: | $345 |
| New splash cover: | $109.25 |
| Installation of splash cover: | $38.01 |
| Second servicing: | $292.62 |
| Warrant Of Fitness: | $52.17 |
| AA insurance (no windscreen protection): | $358.29 ($31.07 monthly) |
| Total Spent: | $5930.03 |
| Sold for: | $3000 |
So ultimately, I had a total loss of $2930.03. Combining the advice that hindsight gave me, I could’ve easily not lost as much money on this car. But that’s not how hindsight works, is it?
Common Costs of Driving
Why do I do this to myself? I could have stopped there, but I realized if I just updated my budget tracker like I was supposed to (hah), calculating these extra costs wouldn’t be too hard. So, you’re welcome. I’m giving you a truly accurate look on what you can expect cost-wise if you plan on buying a car in New Zealand for a year.
I’m not including these costs in my total loss because they would have been incurred with a rental too. Gas prices fluctuated wildly over a year so seeing the annual overview may help future travelers average those costs. And remember, this covered over 25000 km of driving!
These costs are split in New Zealand Dollar and United States Dollar depending on how I paid. I then converted the USD to NZD based on the current exchange rate for a rough idea of the total in NZD.
| NZ$ | US$ | Total NZ$ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gas/Petrol | $3565.90 | $345.66 | $4125.67 |
| Parking | $43 | $176.90 | $329.48 |
(Also, ouch, I did not realize how much I spent on gas. Seeing this total hurts. And don’t even get me started on parking in New Zealand.)
I did do a few roadtrips with friends, which meant we split the cost for gas when we were together. So I’m very fortunate to have not actually paid this entire amount myself. So another pro-tip for those buying a car in New Zealand: find a travel buddy to help you with the cost!
Closing Thoughts on New Zealand Car Ownership
Despite the net loss I had on the car, I still consider buying a car in New Zealand the right choice for me. By the end of the year, I had driven over 25000 kilometers around New Zealand (have I mentioned this enough?). Because I had a car, I was able to visit many more places than I would have otherwise and was able to experience New Zealand camping (I even slept in my car on a number of occasions). Having a car also made it easy to travel with friends from home or those I met along the way.
I also want to add that I did take the ferry between the North and South Islands four times over the year (too many times, to be honest). If you have a car, you need to consider that the vehicle ferry ticket is about 4 times as expensive as a walk-on passenger. Buying early can save you some money, but vehicle tickets will always be more expensive and have more limited spots.
The total loss I had was still less than it would have cost to rent a car for even a fraction of the time I was in New Zealand. If I wasn’t staying for as long as I did and could plan ahead, I would rent a car for a short term instead. But the flexibility and security owning a car in New Zealand gave me was worth it.
Was it by far my biggest expense over the year? Yes. Was it also my biggest source of stress? Absolutely.
But owning a car also gave me an amount of freedom that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. And, in the end, challenging yourself is just part of travel.
Are you planning on buying a car in New Zealand on your upcoming trip? Did you buy a car when you were in New Zealand, how did it go? Let us know in the comments!
