Hello Yvonne!

The more observant amongst you may have noticed that Yvonne is the name of the car in our blog sub-title. Sadly Emily car is being scrapped and so we’ve been out shopping for a new car, new used in the loosest of possible ways here. It can be a bit of a minefield as we found out so forgive us if the story of how Yvonne joined our family gets a little dry but hopefully this should help give you some advice should you ever have to do it yourself.

The best website we found for second-hand cars was carsales.com.au. Cars in Australia have to have registration (rego) to be driven on the roads. To qualify for rego the car has to pass a road-worthiness test to gain a road worthy certificate (RWC). Due to legal stuff most cars from private sellers won’t come with either as it costs too much or can lead to identity fraud. Because of this we could’ve ended up buying a car that looked good in our vast mechanical end engineering experience (none) but that would have failed the RWC leaving us out of pocket with no car. Not good. So we came up with a plan to take the car we wanted for a RWC test before buying her.

Unfortunately we didn’t have the greatest start, even with such a brilliant plan. We’d viewed a couple and decided to go for a 1986 Mazda 323. We’d negotiated with the owners, and they let us take it for the RWC before buying. All was going well and she’d only need $300 to fix her up which we were quite happy to pay. That was until...

We lost count at some point but the engine completely cut out around twenty times on us across two days. So we drove it back to the owners, or attempted to at least but we had to abandon it five minutes from their house as the engine well and truly died. They were really nice about it and we renegotiated and they agreed to repair any breakages and we could have first option on her. And so two days later we drove off with a newly fixed car!

After getting her checked out for RWC at a different mechanics, which was a lot cheaper than we’d thought, we then went to register her, which was a lot more expensive than we’d thought. But she had bright new shiny number plates starting YV and so she was christened Yvonne. Check her out below, isn't she a beauty!

Rex’s Rules of the Road

• If you want a good place to start try carsales.com.au. Kind of in the name really.

• Some mechanics can be dicks. As Rach experienced some will try and rip you off if you’re a woman and will even resort to shouting.

• Always negotiate to get terms you’re happy with and don’t be scared of walking away.

• You can drive on Victorian roads with no rego or insurance, but you’ll need to buy a temporary permit from VicRoads. Don’t mess with this though; it’s literally bare bones insurance cover.