MOTOR TRADE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VI, Issue 274, 4 November 1916, Page 2

MOTOR TRADE.

THE AMERICAN CAMPAIGN. Wellington, Nov. 1. During the first seven months of the current year New Zealand imported nearly 4900 motor cars, failed at approximately £490.000. This total represents a big increase on the imports for the corresponding period of 1915, but the figures in themselves do not tell the whole story. American manufacturers have secured a largely increased share of the trade, owing in part to the inability of many British firms to attend to commercial orders. The Ministry of Munitions has first call upon the services of the manufacturers of cars in the United Kingdom, and the American exporters have been quick to take advantage of the opportunity that the war has created for them. American cars have been coming into New Zealand at a record pace during the last eight or 10 months. Referring to this subject to-day, a business man who was recently in the United Kingdom said he was inclined to be.ieve the Americans were trying to fortify their position in the New Zealand market with a view to after-war competition. Their light, high-powered cars, with standardised parts, were particularly suited to colonial conditions, and they were offering agents attractive terms with the object of establishing a wide connection. “No exception can be taken to this selling campaign.’’ he said, “but I think the people of New Zealand ought to keep in mind the fact that after the war the British manufacturers of motor cars, and of many other types of machinery, are going to compete under new conditions. We shall have cheap, standardised motor cars from the huge plants that have been established to handle war orders. British factories that used to produce cars i by the dozen will be ready to produce them by the hundred, and they will possess the most modern automatic . machines for the purpose. The Ame- | ricans are not going to have anything like a monopoly of the cheap, light, relatively high-powered cars after the close of the war.”