Car stories | KickTyres

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A red Holden Commodore VF II SV6 sedan parked at a kerb in Fremantle, one of the last models built in Australia

How Australia stopped building cars, and what it left behind

On 20 October 2017 the last Commodore came off the line at Elizabeth. What that did to the used market is still working itself out, and it changes how you should buy one of these cars today.

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A BYD Atto 3 electric crossover photographed on a suburban street, one of the models that pushed Chinese brands into the sales top five

7 min read

How Chinese brands took a quarter of the market in four years

In 2022 the joke was that nobody would buy one. In 2026 BYD is Australia's second-biggest brand, Chinese marques hold 25.8 per cent of the market, and the first big wave of them is landing in the used listings. Here is how it happened, and what it means second-hand.

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A Nissan Skyline R34, one of the Japanese-market cars that reached other countries almost entirely through the used export trade

7 min read

Why New Zealand drives Japan's used carsNew Zealand

Roughly half the cars on New Zealand roads were bought new by somebody in Japan. That is not an accident of trade. It is the result of one country making it expensive to keep an old car, and another deciding not to.

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