This is a little bit of Kiwiana - things that could only happen in New Zealand.
My first job was in a car sales which also ran quite a large garage and lube bay. There were probably thirty men working there, including about eight apprentices. Apart from other office tasks, I also did the car registrations which meant filling in a form in triplicate, taking it to the Post Office and getting the plates. I remember this particular car because I always had a helluva job fitting the title into the space provided.
The farmers were the only ones who could buy new cars. The were the only ones with overseas funds (export meat and dairy produce), and they loved the Dodge Dart - it had a huge boot to fit the newborn lambs in.
Of course other people could buy new cars if they had overseas funds - that basically meant a bank account in Britain - then the sterling was transferred into dollars, and there was always a mad scramble to buy foreign currency at outrageous prices as the New Zealand dollar was worth nothing, but most people couldn't afford a second hand car in the 1960s, much less buy a brand new yank tank. (Other people usually meant politicians and importers/exporters.)
Yup, the farmers would drive that monster over the paddocks during lambing. The V8 engine gave it plenty of power. Motherless lambs were packed into the back and brought home for hand feeding. No quad bikes in those days.
The farmers in New Zealand were a privileged lot, on welfare all the time. They weren't allowed to fail. Successive governments propped the agricultural system up, and it is still happening today.
3 comments:
When we got married, we bought a 1956 Mercury 2-door Hardtop, the most beautiful car ever. We've had many nice cars since then, but nothing ever topped the Merc.
Farmers driving regular cars instead of pickup trucks? I guess they doubled for the family car as well.
I had no idea New Zealand was so bad off economically. Wouldn't it have been better to use the British pound for your currency instead of having your own?
I am so woefully ignorant.
This economic problem is what I am wrestling with. (I have no idea if NZ could have used sterling as its own currency - it may have something to do with Commonwealth or Dominion Status.) However, everything comes back to 3 small islands with no natural resources geographically isolated on the edge of the Southern Ocean. It is well to say diversify into technology, but there isn't the human resource i.e. brains. (Not even trainable brains!) Resources here are primary - everything is grown on the land or trawled from the sea. It is in the vested interests of many people NOT to have changes. More on further posts.
Just reading your old blog, as I am curious about where these cars became RHD. I see there are a lot of 1958-61 Plymouth and Dodge cars in New Zealand, but they appear to be standard North American models with right hand drive. Such models were not factory produced anywhere that I can find. I can only guess they were converted in New Zealand, or assembled locally from kits. Do you have any information on how they got to be what they are? Australia built only one model Dodge, and these appear to be none of those.
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