The time has finally come!!! Around 10am I was wondering whether or not to call up Jeff and pitch some ideas to hopefully get the car finished, but as I looked down at the phone, it rang! It was Jeff. The car was ready. O_O
We drove up to Petone and met up with him once again. Apparently the "tire rubbing on full-lock" that AA mentioned in their inspection.. Jeff couldn't find at all. He even had AA test it out again, and after nothing rubbed, they'd decided it was finally time to hand the car off.
Jeff gave me a paper to take down to VTNZ and get some brand new plates.
There is a good chance this may be the only AZ1 in the country. When I called later to put it on my insurance, nothing came up in their system. Exciting!
^ Jeff puts the new plates on the car. The only thing left to do was "extract some cash." The bill from Autorama was way higher than I expected. Here's how it broke down:
AA Compliance and MR2A fee - $404
Auto-liv Seatbelt Installed - $160
Wheel Alignment - $69
Repair Certificate - $463
For a grand total of $1261.32. It's an old car and it needed a little work, so I understand... but that's a bit ridiculous. This brings the total cost of the car, from purchase in Japan to on-the-road in New Zealand, to $17,650. It's just my experience, so I'm sure this isn't normal, but I wanted to share as much info as possible.
SO HAPPY! Just sitting in it felt amazing, but then I started it up. SUCH A COOL SOUND! It's very similar to an MR2 turbo. I gave Jenn a ride out of Autorama to the RX7. Flappy doors!
Of course they gave it to me with an empty tank, so we headed off in search of a gas station.
Almost immediately it was apparent that we couldn't sneak around unnoticed. A truck actually slowed down and the people inside did double-takes.
All gassed up and ready to cruise the 25-30min back to Miramar. What's it like to drive? I'll talk about THAT in the next post!
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