“New Cars A Worry”

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32219, 11 February 1970, Page 2

“New Cars A Worry”

It was distressingly obvious that the possession of a new car in New Zealand i was fraught with worry, Mrs A. Williamson, from the Hurunui branch said, speaking to a remit put before the W.D.F.F. conference in Christchurch yesterday. The remit, “That in future the Minister of Industries and Commerce impose stricter control on the assembling of cars in New Zealand to ensure that they be completed to a much higher standard and that they be inspected finally by qualified men,” was carried by the conference. Mrs Williamson said it was small consolation that a new car had a guarantee on it when a person was stranded somewhere in the country. A car in the country was not a luxury but a necessity and she had known of cases where the gear iever had come away in a new car, where the windscreen wipers were broken, and small mechanical defects caused constant trouble. The chairman of the conference (Mrs D. H. Atkinson) said she had had personal experience with a new car which had to be taken back to the agent three times for mechanical faults before it was discovered that it had been fitted with parts from another model. It was time New Zealanders demanded higher quality from the assembling plants instead of putting up with defects, she said.