Buying a used car in Auckland

[Juniper]

We have decided to buy a used car rather than renting one for our 6 month visit. We'll be staying in the North Shore area for about a week. Any suggestions on where to look for a car? Is TradeMe reliable for vehicles? A friend also mentioned something called Turner's auctions...
https://www.turners.co.nz/

[JandM]

TradeMe is just a kind of local equivalent to eBay - anyone can be on there, so there is a real mixture of sellers. The good, the bad and the ugly! Buyer beware...

[rawsoncj]

Turner's Auctions is really good. I bought a used Toyota through one of their auctions in Wellington a couple months after I moved here in mid-2008. Paid something like $6500 all up for the car, and it still runs fine almost 10 years later.

[Oregonkiwi]

There's also the carfair http://www.carfair.co.nz/
and there are many many used car dealer yards, they tend to be together in one area (eg Wairau Rd on the North Shore, Great North Rd
in central Akl) which makes it easier to walk around and compare. Buying from a dealer can give you more peace of mind in terms of consumer protection, but isn't necessarily the cheapest option.

important information here: https://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicles/bu...ing-a-vehicle/
https://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicles/ch...ng-a-used-car/

[Juniper]

Thanks for all the tips!

[axczar]

Try 2 Cheap Cars. They import used LHD cars from Japan. We bought a 10 year old Forester last year for $6000 NZD with 110,000 km. Runs fine around town. OK as well for trip to Bay of Islands

[diallta]

Try 2 Cheap Cars. They import used LHD cars from Japan. We bought a 10 year old Forester last year for $6000 NZD with 110,000 km. Runs fine around town. OK as well for trip to Bay of Islands

Surely you mean RHD cars?

[axczar]

Yup! My mistake, don't get them confused on the road!

[Juniper]

Yup! My mistake, don't get them confused on the road!

Interesting, we are looking for a Forester as well :-)

[Juniper]

Thanks again for all the suggestions - we checked out many of these options, including Turner's, TradeMe (which included lots of used car dealers advertising), and the Sunday car fair in Ellerslie. The latter seemed like a great source of cheap cars (under $5000) and a few in the low-to-mid range ($10k -ish). There was an onsite inspector you could pay for, as well as change of ownership services and such, even an espresso cart and hot dogs.

We ended up buying a 2010 Subaru Outback from NZC (which simply stands for New Zealand Cars...lol) in the North Shore for about $16k. We negotiated for them to throw in a new stereo unit with bluetooth and a backup camera, which were must-have features for us. We had a little leverage because we were interested in a somewhat more loaded car elsewhere, but it didn't seem like there was much of a wheelin' and dealin' dynamic at dealerships. Which was nice, honestly.

Source of payment was a bit tricky since we can't get a New Zealand bank account without a permanent address (seems that has tightened up a bit lately), and wiring money from home would have taken days because weekend/time difference/processing time. Someone on this forum said they used credit cards, but our dealer wasn't too keen. We ended up charging it all to our debit card, because apparently we have up to a $15k USD daily debit limit?? Who knew.