eagleeyedtiger

He's trying to blame Ukraine for the attack now. Not like they have anything else to focus on right now, right?

I don't think I could stomach that amount for a car too! Unless I win lotto or something.

Honestly I think it's a pretty good time to keep an eye out as EV prices have dropped a lot and there are more popping up as used. I've been looking at car listings every couple of days for weeks. If you don't mind Chinese and Korean cars, there have been 2-3 year old Kia Niros, BYD and MG's showing up every so often around 28-35K. They usually get sold pretty quick too. Can also find the older 2018-19 Ioniqs for less than 20K. In fact there are a couple here in Hamilton for around 15-18K. Unless you need something much bigger, then you're going to have to wait I think! Hopefully in a year or two there will be even more models available.

I contemplated changing the Leaf instead so we can not worry about fast charging when out and about, but we really need something bigger first.

my dream is for a car that fits in carparks

Haha yeah I admit that's one of the downsides.

You could save up for it

We could do that, but It's also partly my brain doesn't like seeing so much money leave our account, just for a car!

I think our most expensive was around 12-13K until we got the Leaf a couple of years ago. We usually keep them for around 10 years so far. In fairness, I come from a country where before you can even buy a car you need to bid for a Certificate of Entitlement (COE) to own a particular class of car. The COE frequently costs more than the car you're buying. And it also has to be renewed every 10 years. But they have an amazing public transport system. So I guess cheap is relative.

We actually don't use the second car all that often outside of longer trips or when family visit, which is why I'm not so concerned about it being less economical. The Leaf is what we usually use around town. However, the kids are getting bigger and I've noticed we have a lot less space when trying to pack the car full, or impossible if we want to include their friends in the car.

A 7 seater typically doesn’t have much boot space when the 6th and 7th seats are up.

I'm aware of this, but it would only really matter for maybe 10% of trips. It's lame, but my actual dream right now would be a late model Kia Carnival. Way too expensive and they really are huge cars to drive around.

Haha guess I'm fancy, almost every car I've bought has been under 100K km's, but the never were very expensive. Benefit of the cheap imported cars here.

Oh yes, we'll be buying from a dealer as I want to trade in our older Prius. I know I can potentially get more buying and selling privately, but I really cannot be bothered with private sales with cars, unless I already know the person.

The wife doesn't really mind not having a 7 seater, but the reason I'm considering it, is it makes it so much easier when family visits a couple times a year. No need to drive two cars every time we go out. Also if we visit family, we take a lot of stuff with us. With a second child now the Prius is getting too small for that. I actually had my mind set on finding a people mover with a proper fold flat third row so we can have a huge boot space for 90% of the time. But for some reason here, they're all either already pretty old or too new and expensive. I'm guessing that they're not as popular as they once were.

I have to give some thought to the renting thing, it might be a good idea.

Thanks, I think that's what's worrying me is that some of them are near 200k and are more than my initial budget, which means there's also potentially maintenance work that would be needed as an additional cost. Not to mention also fitting the other criteria I'm looking for. Definitely want something that's cheaper on maintenance and parts.

Maybe I need to revise my stance then, I'm so used to always looking for smaller cars with lower KM's, but the asking prices for some of these high mileage SUVs is crazy to me, some are close to new car non 7 seater prices.

The other frustration is trying to figure out what models and engines are good and which are duds, so much conflicting information on basically every model I look up.

How high is too high mileage before you guys would rule out a car?

We're looking for an occasional 7 seater, but every one I see in our area and budget is either either in between 100-200k KM's or just really old. Don't particularly want an SUV, but none of the vans or people movers are looking great either.

Now that you mention it, I can hear it. Pharoahe Monch is up there as one of my favorites as well.

Not going to lie, I don't even know of any NZ songs released last year..

The only one I can think of was released in Jan this year, Alien Weaponry's Mau Moko. Not sure if metal songs are ok?

I don't deny there is lots of casual racism here. I'm originally from south east asia but grew up here and experienced it from all colours of people. However, it's definitely a lot less now that I'm older or maybe because there are many more migrants here than there was 30 years ago. Although the name thing rings true in some regards, especially with chinese/indian/muslim sounding names, a lot of times they assume they can't speak English. I'm lucky enough that my name isn't particularly asian sounding, and I'm sure I've landed job interviews in the past because of it.

I hope you're right!