ON TIME PAYMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 June 1925, Page 8

ON TIME PAYMENT.

MOTOR-CAR SALES. IS IT GOOD FOR COUNTRY? BUSINESSMAN'S COMMENTS. “Is this a good thing for a young country like this, which is calling for capital for development, or arc we encouraging our people to acquire a liability that may mop up their wages and perhaps leave the motor trade with groaning ledgers and a yardfull of abandoned cars?” asked Mr. Gordon Fraser (president of the Taranaki Chamber of Commerce) at the annual meeting last wight when commenting on the high iflotor import figures and the extension of the instalment payment system in the purchase of motor vehicles. “To my mind,” Mr. Fraser said, “perhaps the most striking feature in the import statistics for 1924 was the motor trade figures—lB,633 vehicles valued for Customs purposes at £3.541,635, with motor spirit valued at £1,858,408, and tyres £595,825. The March returns show for that quarter a further 5518 motors valued at £1,105,844. Reflect for a moment that this little country, with a trifle over a million and a quarter pecple, registered well over a hundred thousand vehicles under the new Act and is adding to them at the rate of 61 a day, including Sundays. We have more motors per capita than any country in the world except North America, where they cost half what they do here.” Was this a sign of great prosperity or a sign of reckless extravagance, or was there some special factor creating this position? Mr. Fraser asked. He thought there was an accounting factor. The motor-car, it must be remembered, was a liability, very often a necessary liability, and it was certainly not an asset. This point could not be too strongly stressed. In New Zealand recently a system had 'been introduced to provide facilities for those who wished to buy a car and •had not the money to pay for it. That this system had been successful in largely increasing sales -was obvious to all, So widespread had become the practice of buying cars on the instalment plan that even Parliament last year gave its official blessing to an alteration to the Chattels Transfer Act so that it was now unnecessary for a dealer'to register his security. Motor vehicles were on a pai with those items which the custom of many years had made the public understand were to be presumed to have been bought on the hire purchase system.