Just checking here to make sure my dad isn’t whooshing me - do Aussies really put old (say, > 10 yrs) cars out in the street, licence papers in the glovebox, a “Take Me” sign in the window, and a notice listing all the known faults taped to the steering wheel? I mean, as a regular occurence?
And is it because it’s cheaper than doing the roadworthy?
I’d also like to know if this happens anywhere else.
I’ve never seen it, but under Aussie law, ownership of an unregistered vehicle is like ownership of a can of Coke. No paperwork, so it wouldn’t surprise me.
May be in Australia, but over in New Zealand, an unregistered vehicle parked on the road would get ticketed, then towed.
I’ve seen cars on the side of the road with “For Sale” signs, but that ain’t the same thing is it?
Never seen anything like that before.
I have seen unregistered cars on the side of the road towed away, however.
Surely they have scrap yards (wrecking yards? junk yards) in Oz?
Why not get a few dollars for it?
Never seen it.
Never heard of it. An unregistered car gets canaried, then towed. A canary is a big yellow (surprise!) sticker affixed to the windscreen indicating the car is unregistered and/or unroadworthy.
(Victorian law) You have to get a roadworthiness certificate before selling a car for private sale. This can be mighty expensive, although they are less fussy than they were a decade ago, when evidence that you had ever driven a car seemed sufficient evidence of the the need for windscreen replacement. But you can sell to a dealer or a scrapmerchant without one.
I personally have never witnessed it but since Ive been a city slicker for a while now, thats no surprise. I wouldn’t be too suprised if this was a common practice in the bush. In fact, I seem to remember a “friend of a friend” getting a ute as their first car when they weere 10 that cost them something like $50. No rego, no license plate. Only used to drive around the farm and to drive to the bus stop every morning (something like 10k)
Can’t do that in Q. My parents gave us a car when we first got here – we couldn’t do a transfer of ownership without doing a Roadworthy and there was no freaking way that car was gonna pass one of those. Even with the ownership papers in the glovebox, you still can’t transfer ownership without the car being roadworthy. Of course we can drive our freaking cars for decades in an unsafe condition, it’s only when you sell, it gets checked.
In the end it got a lovely canary and cost us a lot of $. Moral of the story – buy a new car before it becomes an emergency.
Never seen it. And I’d think it was pretty unlikely simply because until you get the registration changed over by the Motor Registry the car is still officially yours. If you left an unroadworthy car out on the street with the keys in the ignition and somebody drove off in it you could still be liable for any fines it got for being unroadworthy or any damage it caused.
SirRay wreckers usually charge owners to come and take cars away if they aren’t legally driveable. I had to get rid of an unregistered car one time. It was still driveable with many salvageable parts but was not legally roadworthy. Every wrecker I talked to said he’d pay me $200 for the car but charge $250 to tow it away.