Peter Petersen is calling it a day

Peter Petersen is bringing the curtain down on 47 years in business. Photo / Supplied

There has been a car dealership on Kaikohe's Broadway for 75 years, but not for much longer.

Petersen Motors is closing at the end of the month. Staff have bought the parts and service departments, which will move to Raiharo St, while the car sales department will cease operating altogether.

The first dealership on the site opened just after World War I, selling Morris, Austin, Triumph and Leyland cars, and in 1973 Peter Petersen bought the business as a Morris dealership, under the Motorcorp banner.

A few years later Motorcorp relinquished some of the smaller dealers within its network, and Kaikohe's was one of them. Petersen was left without a franchise, so he began selling Hyundais and Ladas, which were new to New Zealand and considerably cheaper than most other new cars on offer at the time.

Both were somewhat Spartan, but price drove their popularity. What eventually affected sales was the introduction of used imports from Japan, which, although second-hand, boasted greater comfort levels. Hyundai has gone from strength to strength, but Ladas are now virtually extinct outside Russia.

Meanwhile, for 25 years, from the early 1960s, Kaikohe was very much the commercial centre of the Far North, days that Petersen remembers well.

"Kaikohe was a bustling little town back then," he said.

"In my time there have been some significant changes to rural areas, starting in the mid- to late-80s, when the economy began to change."

In 1989 he was offered a Toyota franchise, and the dealership changed brands. He continued with Toyota until 2003, when, in a déjà vu moment, Toyota chopped small dealerships around the country and Petersen Motors was again left in the lurch. Since then it has successfully concentrated on second-hand cars selling for less than $10,000, but now even that is coming to an end.

Petersen said he was well past the "normal time" for retirement, and would even be looking at selling his collection of increasingly rare car manuals to collectors.

The land where Petersen Motors stands, and next door to where once stood a second-hand clothing shop, is believed to have been bought by the Far North District Council. Land on the eastern side, where once stood the Kaikohe Hotel, is owned by Te Rūnanga ā Iwi o Ngāpuhi.