Birds Garage Limited- Cinema Advertising Slide

Description

The Volkswagen Type 3 (1500) was introduced in 1961 and would have been a fancy vehicle to have in your New Zealand driveway- IF you had overseas funds! To protect the local car assembly industry, most car buyers could only purchase a locally made model (and would face a long waiting list). BUT- if you held money overseas and could afford the import tariffs you could import a fully assembled car through a dealer much more quickly. You often got an exotic model which was not common locally.

If you had lots of money overseas (such as a farmer who sold wool in the UK) then you could import a car, sell it for more than you paid for it and then buy another! Little wonder that when John Clarke's comic creation Fred Dagg did a spoof of 'God Save The Queen' he added 'long live our overseas funds'. By the time those words were sung the requirements for importing a car had loosened somewhat, but overseas funds were still an advantage.

Birds Garage was established by Mister H. Bird in 1940 and by the time this slide was made it was owned by N.H Bird. They were among the first Volkswagen dealers in the country. By 1981 the firm had sold Toyotas for some years. 

Identification

Object type

Image

Date

1960s