Far North journalist Sandy Myhre, who has made a career from driving cars and writing about them, has penned a book to help non-experts get the best deal when buying a car.
Ms Myhre, known to Northland Age readers as the editor of the monthly Focus magazine, has covered motorracing as a correspondent for 30 years. And, like millions of other people around the world, is a car-buying customer.
Her new e-book, Never Raced, Rolled or Rallied: The Happy Road to Buying Your Next Car, stemmed from her experiences when on the look-out for a car for herself after returning from living overseas.
"I didn't know whether to buy from a dealer, an auction house or the internet or even to buy something that's been sitting on the side of the road with information on a piece of cardboard stuffed into the window," she said. Throughout her years as a motoring journalist she says the first question most people ask is: "How do I know if the car I'm buying is a sound investment and won't cough its clogs two days after buying it?"
"Our biggest lifetime investment is a house and it's fairly easy to see rotting weatherboards or rusting downpipes. But you can't always see what's going on inside the engine of a car or underneath it, so how do you know if the car you are buying is a sound investment and won't cough its pistons two days after buying it?
"When I trawled through the internet I realised there were quite a few books on how to sell a car but not very many on how to buy one. We all need to know that what we're being told by the seller is legitimate, whether buying privately or from a dealer."
Ms Myhre was the first woman member of New Zealand Motoring Writers' Guild, the first woman member and first president of NZ Motorsport Media Association, is an award-winning travel writer and columnist, the author of books on motoring and car racing and is the founding chief executive of Women's World Car of the Year.
Never Raced, Rolled or Rallied: The Happy Road to Buying Your Next Car is produced by Kerikeri-based Antares Publishing and available for download from Amazon.
