New government proposal for left-hand-drive vehicles

[Dan M]

It may be of interest to some of you that government have proposed to allow left hand drive vehicles that come under the 'special interest vehicle' category to be registered and used in NZ. This widens the scope a bit for importing sports cars less than 20 years old.

There are also other changes, like removing ownership restrictions for LHD cars over 20 years old.

A consultation document is available here:
http://www.landtransport.govt.nz/consultation/stee...

Deadline for comments is 21 August.

It seems that the special interest vehicle scheme has got off to a slow start. Some vehicle sellers are not yet aware of the changes, example here:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-Me-Motors/Cars/Niss...
So if you are after a Skyline or RX7 and will keep it for 4 years, contact Land Transport to confirm that it fits into the SIV category and get a bargain.

Dan

[jamieheasman]

Yeah I saw a mint GTR on TradeMe a couple of weeks ago that would qualify as a 20-year-old classic next year. I'm pretty sure it had a buy-now of $12k. Not a bad investment if you ask me.

LHD eh? I wonder if they'd accept a GMC Syclone in that category - hideously American in all the usual places but indecently quick and IMHO still looks very cool. Can be picked up quite cheaply if you don't mind few kms.

[Dan M]

On first guess I'd say no, but it would be an interesting discussion to see if you satisfy 3 out of these 4 requirements (requirement c is out straight away):

(a) the vehicle (or its make, model and submodel) is identified as being a collector’s item in well-known motoring magazines (or respective websites)

(b) the vehicle’s make and model has been (or was) manufactured in annual volumes of 20,000 units or less;

(c) the vehicle is, and was manufactured as :
(i) a two-door coupe; or
(ii) a convertible;

(d) the vehicle is, and was manufactured as, a high performance vehicle.

It's 2-wheel-drive isn't it? 4wd off-road vehicles are class MC vehicle so are not eligible.

[Omerta]

Dan, are the left hookers going to be competing for the 200 per year SIV permit allocation, or are they additional to this?

[Coq au Vin]

Dan M said:

On first guess I'd say no, but it would be an interesting discussion to see if you satisfy 3 out of these 4 requirements (requirement c is out straight away):

(a) the vehicle (or its make, model and submodel) is identified as being a collector’s item in well-known motoring magazines (or respective websites)

(b) the vehicle’s make and model has been (or was) manufactured in annual volumes of 20,000 units or less;

(c) the vehicle is, and was manufactured as :
(i) a two-door coupe; or
(ii) a convertible;

(d) the vehicle is, and was manufactured as, a high performance vehicle.

It's 2-wheel-drive isn't it? 4wd off-road vehicles are class MC vehicle so are not eligible.

'tis a class NA so it's out.

Omerta: the LHDs have a seperate quota so they will only be competing for the 200 if they don't meet frontal impact stadnards.

[jamieheasman]

Well it would certainly satisfy three of the four conditions. NZ has a very odd perception of what a Coupe is - in Europe we regard Coupes has having a different body style to a saloon, usually a sloping roof-line but here two versions of 4 door saloons are regarded as coupe. Anyway, a pick-up isn't lkely to be regarded as a coupe.

Whether you could class a Syclone as a goods vehicle is debatable. It was designed to be a high perfomance leisure vehicle and has a very low cargo rating compared to the cooking versions of the breed (Sonoma). In this respect it would be even less pratical than say a HSV Maloo. The vehicle categories on the LTSA website also say one thing in one area and another in a different area. I guess you'd just have to ask the question.

It is 4wd by the way.

I may just have to wait a few more years until they're 20 years old.

[Omerta]

jamieheasman said:

Well it would certainly satisfy three of the four conditions. NZ has a very odd perception of what a Coupe is - in Europe we regard Coupes has having a different body style to a saloon, usually a sloping roof-line but here two versions of 4 door saloons are regarded as coupe. Anyway, a pick-up isn't lkely to be regarded as a coupe.

That's a can of worms... this was my take on it in our submission to the Frontal Impact Amendment.

c. COUPE OR CONVERTIBLE
There is no New Zealand or internationally recognized definition of a coupe or convertible that we could discover. There is the SAE standard J1100 which includes a definition for a Coupe as “a fixed-roof automobile with less than 33 ft³ (0.93 m³, 934 L) of rear interior volume”, however manufacturers do not publish this measure and it is very difficult to measure without specialised equipment; therefore we regard it as unusable here.
We note that manufacturers use the term ‘coupe’ in their marketing material to make an otherwise standard vehicle sound more exciting, for example the Mercedes CLS is a modern 4 door saloon, described by Mercedes as a ‘coupe’. We believe it is important that prescriptive definitions are included in the rule to make this criterion effective.
We propose the following definitions be applied:
A Coupe is a vehicle which, as manufactured:
• Has 2 or 3 doors, and
• Has an ‘A’ and ‘C’, but no ‘B’ pillar, and
• Has a height specified by the manufacturer of 1350mm or less
A Convertible is a vehicle which, as manufactured:
• Has 2 doors, and
• Has an ‘A’, but no ‘B’ or ‘C’ pillars, and
• Is open to the sky from the top of the windscreen to the rear of the passenger compartment, and
• Has a height specified by the manufacturer of 1350mm or less
Note that Targa and T-Top vehicles have a C pillar and therefore would be defined as a Coupe for the purposes of this rule.

They didn't think it necessary to define 'coupe' however, so who knows what the interpretation will be now

[Coq au Vin]

jamieheasman said:

Whether you could class a Syclone as a goods vehicle is debatable. It was designed to be a high perfomance leisure vehicle and has a very low cargo rating compared to the cooking versions of the breed (Sonoma). In this respect it would be even less pratical than say a HSV Maloo. The vehicle categories on the LTSA website also say one thing in one area and another in a different area. I guess you'd just have to ask the question.

It would need to have a very low cargo rating to be class MA. In the definition of goods vehicle it says:

definition said:

(a) a vehicle that is constructed for both the carriage of goods and passengers shall be considered primarily for the carriage of goods if the number of seating positions multiplied by 68 kg is less than 50% of the difference between the gross vehicle mass and the unladen mass;

Which essentially means (assuming there are 3 passenger seats) the cargo rating would need to be less than 204kg to sneak into the MA category.

I suppose this sort of thing is one of the issues you get when trying to rigidly define what is classic or collectable. You'll never be able to please all of the people all of the time...

[mark387mw]

So I can bring in a C6 Corvette if one of the magazines consider it to be a collector's item. Is it a collectors item?

[Coq au Vin]

mark387mw said:

So I can bring in a C6 Corvette if one of the magazines consider it to be a collector's item. Is it a collectors item?

I think a C6 Corvette would be a prime example of the sort of car the SIV system is aimed at. Best to get a Z06 to be sure though