page_title: Automotive industry in New Zealand
section_title: 1958 Motor Holdings
hierarchical_section_title: Automotive industry in New Zealand / Assembly plants continued / 1958 Motor Holdings
caption_attribution_description: English: a black Jowett Javelin at the end of a culde sac. an old British car
context_page_description: The automotive industry in New Zealand supplies a market which has always had one of the world's highest car ownership ratios. The distributors of new cars are essentially the former owners of the assembly businesses. At the dealership level they have maintained their old retail chains in spite of the establishment of the many new independent businesses built since the 1980s by specialists in used imports from Japan. Toyota entered into direct competition with those used-import businesses refurbishing old Toyotas from Japan and selling them through their own dealers as a special line. The nation's car fleet is accordingly somewhat older than in most developed countries.
  New Zealand no longer assembles passenger cars. Assembly plants closed after tariff protection was removed and distributors found it cheaper to import cars fully assembled. Cars had been assembled at a rate nearing 100,000 a year in 1983 but with the country's economic difficulties their numbers dropped sharply. Towards the end of the decade the removal of various restrictions as part of the nation's restructuring of its economy made available low-priced old used cars from Japan.
context_section_description: Motor Holdings developed from the New Zealand franchise of Jowett Motors. The New Zealand franchise imported and assembled Bradford's very light vans and trucks in Auckland. Following Jowett's 1954 closure Motor Holdings won the Volkswagen franchise and changed its name to VW Motors. VW Motors built a new assembly plant which opened in 1958 at Fort Richard Road in Otahuhu. Rambler vehicles by American Motors Corporation were built at the VW plant as a secondary line to Volkswagen until 1962.
  Motor Holdings founded in 1936 controlled 15 smaller companies, including VW Motors and the new assembly company of Motor Industries International Ltd. Motor Holdings assembled many different makes in addition to Volkswagen including Studebaker, Nash, and Hudson in the 1950s; Rambler, Peugeot 403 and 404 in the early 1960s; and Datsun, Simca, Skoda, the Fiat 500 (christened "Fiat Bambina" in New Zealand in 1965), and the New Zealand-made Trekka through the 1960s and 1970s.
  European Motor Distributors was formed by Colin Giltrap in 1978, and continued to assemble Volkswagens until 1986.
  The Otahuhu plant built around 127,000 vehicles before it was sold to Mazda and its last vehicle was a Mazda utility made in 1987. The empty plant remained untouched since that time when visited by the former CEO of Motor Holdings with a writer in late 2018, 30 years later.
caption: Jowett Javelin
exif: {}