For the front yard.

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I got given this the other day, a donor for my daughter's car as body stuff is hard to find. Mechanicaly it's just a Mazda 323. Lucky I don't live where they can tell me what I can and can't do on my own property. The passenger mirror is already off, that's the most important thing she needs.

 
Was the passenger mirror off of the car when you received this donor car?
This car seems in quite good condition, how does it operate?
I see the FORD blue oval on the front, what is this car called in NZ?
 
Think it's a Laser...they dropped that name in Oz for the Mazda 323 with the ford badge IIRC...don't follow them so could be wrong.

Silk...major project (well minor for you with your skills).
 
My first car in Taiwan. Could never get it to run properly and when it got towed I let them keep it.

Pity, seemed potentially a nice enough car.

Might be able to fix it now because I know a bit more about vacuum leaks, which is probably what was wrong with it.

Might still have the owners handbook somewhere.
 
I have a 2016 Scion iA, which is a Mazda 2 in sedan form. Great little car excellent fuel economy and handling narrow tires chop through snow as good as my Impreza did.
 
It's a 1995 Ford Laser Lynx, a badged Mazda Neo, but the front is different to the Neo. Guards, bonnet, lights and maybe bumper. When her car got reversed into by a truck a few years ago, it needed a right front guard, headlamp and the cover over the lamp...they were very hard to find, and of course over priced. She smashed the mirror last year, so I took that off ready to put on her car. The engine is the B6, same as in an MX5.

If the rego isn't kept current for over a year, it has to go in for basically an import inspection, and pretty tough. You can put them on hold, it costs nothing, and then register it again when you want to. My road bikes are on hold...sometimes the rego is current, mostly not. The fine is less than the rego. It was sitting in her back yard for 3 years, then said she wanted it going again. We towed it in, got it going and then advised her not to proceed, but of course she did...paid a lot of money to have her car put off the road. After a bit of grumbling about how mean the system is, she gave it to me.
 
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Bought mine from a missionary.

You'd think that'd be fairly safe, but maybe his text for the day was "Render unto Ceasar"

(Oooo...religion!)
 
We did have a few Mercury Lasers here back in the day. (For you Kiwis & Aussies, now-defunct Mercury was a division of FoMoCo, slightly upscale from the Ford division, but well-below the Lincoln division. A number of Ford cars had Mercury equivalents - for example, the Ford Pinto and the Mercury Bobcat, the Ford Maverick and the Mercury Comet, and of course the Ford Escort and the Mercury Laser.)

The Lasers were quite rare - I'd guess that 10+ Escorts were sold for every Laser. I last saw one 5 to 6 years ago.

The original Ford Escort sold here in the '80s was European, I think German, and its sister car was the Mercury Lynx. When the European Escort was replaced by the Japanese Escort c. '91, the Lynx was replaced by the Laser. Both the Laser and the 2nd-gen Escort were rebadged Mazda 323s/Proteges.

The Escort wagon was particularly popular here.

But, just to confuse things, that Laser you (Silk) have shown looks more like a Ford Aspire to me. If I recall correctly, the Aspire was a rebadged Kia-built 2nd-gen Mazda 121 or 323, sold here c. 1995.

Earlier, c. 1991, Ford sold 1st-gen Mazda 121s, also Korean-built, as the Ford Festiva. (Not to be confused with the Ford Feista, a Spanish Ford sold here in the late-70s.) Confused yet?
smile.gif
 
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If you want to be confused about vehicle models, come to New Zealand, we get all sorts.

Another one for my yard today...a 2002 Sonata. My youngest son moves to Wellington this weekend, and they won't need a car (or have to pay for parking), so he's selling it. We'll look after it until it sells. Not much lawn left.
 
Having a parts car is awesome! The Laser Lynx was the top of the range in its day, and very few were sold here. I was an apprentice at the local Ford dealer when they were new, and got to pre-deliver one...it was the coolest little car I'd ever driven!

And Silk, you're not wrong about the weird and wonderful Japanese imports you get in NZ. I was there in March, and spent a day wandering around Wellington, taking pics of all the strange names on otherwise familiar cars - Mazda 2, for example, was the Demio. Yes, simple things amuse simple minds!
 
But an Outlander is an Outlander, it's pretty hard to pick the import, unless you spot the NZ VIN number etched on the rear screen. As a mechanic you'd understand the problems putting these things on a scanner, or just trying to find data and info on them, they don't exist to the people who program scanners, or produce sparkplug or oil filter cataloges...so lucky we have Repco who have stepped up to our special game.

When it stops raining I'll pull a few more parts off the Lynx...I want the sump as the daughter's one is dinged...loses about 500mm in capacity, which is a lot seeing as it burns oil. Running out of lawn...had to shift them all today to do some mowing of dead grass. There are 2 more in the back yard.

 
Good thing you don't have a Home Owners Association there mate, they'd be going nuts!

Regarding the Japanese imports, the local guys were telling me there's a good living to be made in NZ converting the infotainment units to English - something I would never have thought of!
 
Yeah, they still have Tokyo maps on the GPS, and some sheila talking to you in Japanese...sometimes it sounds quite serious. When I was a bit more involved in my diagnosing, I could recognise Japanese writing on things like the fuel pump fuse, so I could put a loop in and current ramp it. But on thursday I pulled the fuse cover on a Mazda Capella, gave up and spent over an hour removing the complete rear seat to access the pump...I didn't need a scope to tell me it was toast.
 
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