The month that was... April

The Attorney-General, Dough Graham, slammed New Plymouth MP Harry Duynhoven for naming – under parliamentary privilege – a top Auckland dealership whose management he alleged had been involved in odometer fraud. Duynhoven asked Graham if the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) intended to investigate the claim involving some staff of the business.

However, Speaker of the House Doug Kidd said parliament wasn’t the place where matters relating to the investigation of alleged offences were conducted.

Duynhoven regretted the dealership had been named because it might prove to have been seriously prejudicial to the company in the future. The rebuke followed the minister’s attempts to table a video, which he claimed featured senior management and a used car being sold with a new odometer.

Duynhoven’s bid was unsuccessful and he eventually handed the recording to Graham, who passed it onto the police.

April 20, 2007

TVNZ’s Fair Go aired a story regarding car damage due to drink bottles being put into cup holders – a claim the industry didn’t believe was a design fault.

The programme told the story of an SUV owner who claimed its upholstery was damaged after leaving a 1.25-litre bottle of Pump in a holder.

The vehicle distributor involved initially refused to repair the damage, a stance it rescinded before Fair Go went to air.

A test performed for the cameras showed the car’s leather seating starting to smoke after two minutes of sunlight reflected through the water bottle and onto the upholstery.

The Motor Industry Association (MIA) was invited on the show. Chief executive Perry Kerr insisted the issue was one of bottle design and not the vehicle manufacturer’s fault.

“Eleven cases were reported in 2006 with a further two this year,” said Kerr. “The common theme seems to be the large-size Pump bottle. This issue has been raised with Coco-Cola, which after a time said it would change the design of the bottle.”

The programme insisted that change wouldn’t be effective. David Vinsen, of the Independent Motor Vehicle Dealers’ Association (IMVDA), said the bottles should be labelled as a potential danger, not the cars.

Some dealers were risking fines of up to $200,000 for not completing their trader registrations on time.

At the end of the final period for those remaining on transitional registrations, almost 100 had not legalised their situations.

As of March 31, 2004, some 89 dealers had yet to complete their paperwork or had not begun the process. They still held transitional rather than full registrations with most waiting for statutory declarations to be processed. Another 440 registration applications were pending.

Margaret Vos, spokesperson for the Ministry of Economic Development, said staff were working hard on clearing all they could.

“Our national processing centre has its full complement of processors working on applications and, depending on volumes, they may work overtime to get through as many registrations as possible presuming all other application components have been correctly submitted.

“The penalties for trading without being registered are up to $50,000 for an individual trader and $200,000 for a company. Given the ease and low cost of registering, it’s just not worth the risk of trading illegally.”

Arrivals of new vehicles were closing in on used imports with many predicting the former would overtake the latter for the first time since bulk importing began in the 1980s.

Figures released by NZ Customs showed the combined total of new passenger and commercial arrivals reached 9,310 in March 2008 compared with the used-imports market’s total of 10,114 units.

Those figures put the used-imports sector just 804 arrivals ahead of new vehicles, which many said was the closest margin since bulk importing of used began.

Chief executive of the IMVDA, David Vinsen, believed new-vehicle sales would overtake used that year.

He added: “We think it’s highly likely and predict they will reach 100,000 to 110,000 as compared to 80,000 to 100,000 used sales meaning the used market will be equal to the new market at best – and overtaken at worst.”

Perry Kerr, the MIA’s chief executive, said: “The new-vehicle market hasn’t consistently outsold the used market since 1989. We predict, however, that the new market will outsell used between 2009 and 2010.”