Liz Dobson: New cars galore, but neighbours stay cool

One of the cars Driven's new editor has been driving is the BMW M3.

As New Zealand's motoring industry is so buoyant, there are often two new cars parked outside my house each week to be tested for Driven.

Some are different model shapes, transmissions or fuel sources of a recently launched vehicle - for example I had a Mazda3 diesel hatch parked in my carport last week after having already tested the manual and auto versions of hatch and sedan Mazda3s.

I've also recently had such high-end vehicles as the Mercedes-Benz E-Class 250 and BMW's M3 with such a deep rumbling exhaust that it would have woken my neighbours from their Saturday morning slumber.

Not that my neighbours care. I live at the start of a shared driveway, with six other houses past mine. I've lived there a year, so would have had about 100 new cars parked in front of my place.

But not one of my neighbours has stopped and asked, "why do you have so many new vehicles in front of your house?".

They probably think I'm just indecisive about what vehicle I want to own.

At previous houses, neighbours have concluded I work for a car dealership, am a fleet buyer or - best yet - am a high class prostitute.

No seriously, a neighbour a few houses away from my central Auckland home thought they were my clients' vehicles.

When I lived at the end of a cul-de-sac, a neighbour approached as I was about to get into my expensive Audi.

"Is that your car?" he asked.

At last, I thought, a neighbour who is interested in vehicles. So I went to talk to him for five minutes about the car - its performance, price, specifications.

When I paused for breath he smirked, "I only wanted to know because you parked it yesterday with the driver door facing the footpath, and the council has been around at night ticketing cars parked that way."

Shame.