So, after eventually arriving in New Zealand we left Rowe's aunties (Ian and Suzanne) house and set off into Auckland with our main objective being to purchase a car for less than $1,500 (£750). We decided the best way to do this was to go into various hostels within Auckland and look at their notice boards for people who are selling their cars. The first hostel we went into we found a car within our price range so took a note of that cars details and proceeded to leave the hostel to head to the next. As we were on the stairs heading out of the hostel I over heard an english lady telling a friend of hers that she was looking to get rid of her car, so we asked her about the car and decided to have a look at the car (which happended to be stored in a salesroom dedicated to selling ex-back packing cars). The car was a 1989 Ford Laser (Larry) in white with 92,000 km on the clock and she wanted around $1,400 for it. We took the car for a test drive and all liked the car so didn't dismiss the car as a very likely option. We hesitated in buying it straight away due to it being the first car we saw and decided to have a look at other hostel notice boards before deciding on the car. After visiting half dozen more hostels with no real joy we decided to put an offer on Larry to be told that someone had just done the same and that it was no longer for sale.
The next day we were determined to buy a car so that we could begin our NZ road trip which we were already a week behind. We visited several car garages looking for a car and found many within our budget, however they all seemed to have an issue with them or were just falling apart. We began to get stressed and annoyed at the possibility of finding a decent car which would last our journey. Eventually we found a 1993 Mitsubushi Galant V6 which was not initially for sale but the owner (it was actually the garage owners personal car) was willing to listen to offers. We took the car for a test drive and liked the way it drove, the size of it and felt it was the car for us. We then went back to the garage and after a short negotiation we managed to buy OUR new car for $1350.
We then drove the car back to Rowe's relatives house and proceeded to clean it, we even found a 15" spanner in the engine!
Job Done, Now for the road trip to begin!
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