MOTOR-CAR IMPORTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 February 1947, Page 3

MOTOR-CAR IMPORTS

HOPES FOR EXTENSION OF PERIOD INDUSTRY (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Feb. 13. Many British motor-car manufacturers were hoping that the New Zealand Government would extend the period for the import of complete cars, to the Dominion, said Mr. Harold Stone, a director of the English export company of Tozer, Kemsley and Millbourn, at present in Wellington with Mr. N. E. Marshall, managing-director of the company’s Australian firm. Mr. Stone has been visiting the main centres in New Zealand to study trends in the motor trade. ’

Mr. Stone said that a further extension of the period for importing complete cars would serve a two-fold purpose. It would assist British manufacturers and would make new cars readily available to persons in New Zealand, who were urgently in need of them. He advocated that import allocations should be made on a 12 month basis, because in the present uncertainty in industry it was difficult to arrange for supplies to be shipped within the present quarterly period. To-day New Zealand was getting its full share of the supply of cars available from British factories, said Mr. Stone. Any idea that manufacturers were trying to exploit the shortage in new cars could be dismissed immediately. “British manufacturers have a soft spot for New Zealand, probably because you are so English,” said Mr. Stone, who added that British interests in the industry were fully alive to the value of the New Zealand market. New Zealanders could rest assured that British manufacturers would cooperate to the limit within whatever policy New Zealand decided upon for the import of motor vehicles. The production of all-rubber tyres was scheduled for October, said Mr. Stone, “but they are by no means general yet. I do not thing anyone would dispute the superiority of natural rubber, and synthetic tyres were designed mainly to meet war needs.”