Gambling $4,000 on Purple!

One last photo with Pokey. (Note the missing hubcap)

Five weeks is an awkward amount of time in terms of transportation options traveling around a relatively rural country.  We didn’t want to be tied to only taking buses, or hitchhiking, so the only real option was to either rent a car or campervan, or buy one.

A lot of people thought we were crazy for buying something while only planning to be in the country for 5 weeks. After arriving on the red-eye and buying a beat up old van about 2 hrs later in a sleep deprived state (it wasn’t until later that we realized that we didn’t even check the oil on the beast before purchasing it), we started to worry that they might be right.

Our options other than buying something would have been:

1. Hitch-hike or buy a bus pass. Neither very appealing.
2. Rent a small car for ~$700, and stay in hostels the entire time
3. Rent a small “sleeper van” (minivan with bed in the back) for about $2,000. 

Being able to sleep in a van, whether we bought it or rented it, would save us about $35 per night compared to sleeping in a hostel. So over the course of the 30 days we planned to be on the road, that is roughly a $1,000 saving.  Given those numbers, renting a van over a car didn’t make sense. But buying one …

Between the $700 rental fee, and the $1,000 savings in accommodation, if we could buy something, and resell it a month later while losing less than $1,700 if would be cheaper, and more fun, than renting a car.

New Zealand makes it really easy to buy/sell vehicles. Foreign licenses are ok; title transfer costs $10 and is done at the post office; registration, done in 3 month increments, cost $75; insurance isn’t required, though is still advisable.

The calculus on WHAT to buy was a little more tricky.  The more expensive the van, the lower the likelihood of it dying in the month we own it, and the cheaper the van, the less capital we have at risk.  It wasn’t clear which would be easier to sell on the tail end.

With all this in mind, we opted for the cheap end of the spectrum and bought a beat up old Nissan Serena with 329,000 kms on it. We gave it a one block test drive, took note of the nasty dents in the drivers side, the nearly falling off rear bumper, and a registration that seemed to indicate the vehicle hadn’t been driven in over 6 months, and drove off with it.

I wouldn’t recommend trying this at home.

We figured, probably foolishly, that a) the odds of it dying within the 30 days that we were going to own it we relatively low, and b) that there would be equally foolish travelers in Christchurch looking for cheap transportation to whom we could sell it.  With up to $1,700 to lose on a $3,500 vehicle, we figured we could pull it off.

When all was said and done, we put in an additional $400 for a total of $3,900 (registration, insurance, buying a foam mattress, sheets, camping gear, cookware, etc).

So, day one in New Zealand and we were $3,900 in the hole.  Here’s hoping Pokey (our van) doesn’t die on us!

We made it out of Auckland without incident, but on the first weekend of driving Pokey around the Coromandel we got a flat tire. Nothing serious, but enough to realize that while the van came with a spare tire and jack, it was missing the jack handle and tire iron. Easy enough to solve, but hopefully not an omen of things to come.

Thankfully it wasn’t. 

We made our way down the north island and over to the south island without incident, though Pokey started showing increasing amounts of “character”. Belts squealing when the engine was started on cold mornings, automatic windows sometimes working (and sometimes not), a petrol engine that sounded strangely like a diesel, various lights not working, new dents or cracks in the body becoming visible, hubcaps falling off, etc.

But she kept running.

About a week before we were planning to be in Christchurh, we put an online ‘For Sale’ notice on a travelers forum and crossed our fingers that she would still be running by then. 

We received a few bites on the ad, and even lined up two separate couples that wanted to test drive the van the evening we were due to arrive in Christchurch. There was hope!

About a half hour outside of Christchurch we stopped at a car wash to give her a good scrub, then made our way into the city at 6pm, somewhat nervous about how she would do in the test drives.

2 hours later we accepted an offer to sell her for $3,000.

We spent one last night in the van, packed up our things in the morning, and delivered her to her new owners, a couple from France that had just arrived in NZ, with a tub of Hokey Pokey ice cream. (We told them Pokey's name and origin from the ice cream, and they agreed to keep it).

Given how quickly we sold her, we probably could have held out for a few hundred more dollars, but given that when we put her through the carwash it knocked a headlight loose, we figured it was worth a premium to get some hard cash back in our hands, and have the last four days of our time in NZ free to enjoy and not stress about selling the van.

So in the final calculation, we took a $900 loss (NZ $) on the van, meaning that we made out at least $800 better than we would have if we had rented.

Would we do it again? For sure. Though I’d probably take an extra day to make the purchase so as to be a little less groggy from the red eye!

Side view. Food storage bins under the master bedroom.

Rear view. Clothes storage, camping chairs. Wine storage in front of the washer fluid.