Hopefully our car won’t crap out on us and cause me to regret not titling this “how NOT to buy a car in New Zealand.” At the moment, however, she is puttering along nicely, albeit not exactly quietly.

I had heard that buying a used car in New Zealand was easy, but I didn’t really believe it. My experience with logistics abroad, say, trying to make photocopies in Argentina, is that it’s never easy. In fact, it’s usually a gigantic headache. And buying a car? Hell, when we bought a car in the US it took a week of one utter disaster after another to figure everything out. So I was fully prepared (although, not necessarily happy about it) to spend a few days in Auckland car shopping.

And then, approximately 12 hours after clearing customs, Macky and I were counting out our cash (literally every single New Zealand dollar we had managed to extract) on the counter of a bike shop in Takapuna, a suburb north of Auckland. We were short a few hundred dollars (turns out you can’t just take 2,500 USD out of an ATM in a foreign country in 12 hours, whoops) of the negotiated price, but after offering to outfit all the shop employees in Santa Fe Brewing–Pivot Cycles t-shirts, we walked out with a key.

“Don’t we have to go to the DMV or something? And like, transfer the title?” we asked, bewildered at how easily that had gone.

“Naw,” said Nick, the car’s former owner. “You can do all that online.”

And so, just like that, we were car owners.

Here she is!

We had just bought a 1995 Toyota Corola that was fully registered, had an up to date Warrant of Fitness and actually turned on when you put the key in the ignition. It cost us 2,395 USD. Here’s how we did it.

1 We talked to real people.

New Zealand has a glut of used cars up for sale on sites like trademe.co.nz and autotrader.co.nz. We were utterly overwhelmed by the options. Some of the cars seemed absurdly cheap — could they possibly run for that price? How would we ever know if something was secretly wrong with them? Eek. So, we ignored all these sites and walked into a bike shop. We got some trail recommendations and, incidentally, the owner Philip, mentioned that one of his employees at his other shops had a car up for sale. Philip seemed seriously doubtful of our ability to navigate Auckland on our own, so he insisted we follow him to the other shop in our rental car. There we met Nick and Matt, who were selling their 1995 Toyota Corola. We took a look at the car–it was basically exactly what we were looking for. Something big enough for the bikes to fit in the back, something long enough to sleep in and something that would get decent mileage. The price, however, at 3500 NZD was a little bit out of our range, however, we told Nick and Matt we’d think about it and went to try to get out cash.

2 We pulled every string in the book to get cash. Fast.

Most ATM cards have a daily withdrawal limit of $400 – 500 USD. While good news if someone steals your card, this is a bummer if you’re trying to get a bunch of cash out in a hurry. We both could have taken out $1200 on our credit cards but didn’t want to do this as cash advances on credit cards start collecting interest immediately. Luckily, I have two debit cards and Macky has one, so that brought us up to $1400 NZD in cash. Then because Macky has a Fidelity account, we were able to walk into a New Zealand Bank and take out a cash advance for $1500 NZD. This put us at exactly $2,900 NZD. Not exactly what Matt and Nick were looking for, but about what we were willing to pay. We decided to walk into the shop with the cash and see what would happen. It worked and we bought the car.

3 We went into the local AA (Automobile Association)

If you ever have occasion to drive in New Zealand, or just want maps or information, the AA is great. We walked in, they showed us the form we needed to fill out to officially own the car. We filled it out, they took it, we paid 9 dollars and the process was over. It was the easiest thing I have ever done. Even better, the AA has a reciprocal relationship with the AAA in the US, so we were able to transfer our AAA membership for free. Then we spent the 50 dollars to upgrade to a premium membership and get an unlimited number of tows, because you just never know. The AA has already come in handy when we left the lights on and got a “flat battery,” as they call it here. The AA showed up in 15 minutes, jumped the car and we were on our way. Win.

And so, now we are off, sleeping in the back of our Toyota Corolla (admittedly we have to prop open the rear hatch with sticks to allow our feet to dangle out, being six feet tall is a pain) and living the vagabond life. We bought a stove for $15 dollars. We spend our nights in free campsites and our days riding bikes or lurking around various cafes trying to pick up nonexistent wifi signals. We are on our way to becoming real New Zealand tramps. It was, and I hate to say this lest I jinx it, easy.

Have you ever bought a car abroad? What was your experience like? Share your thoughts below!