Talk:Buying a car in Australia

What is a "roobar" and why should the car have spots? -(WT-en) phma 06:49, 30 Jan 2004 (EST)

Roobar is short for kangaroo bar, the Australian term for bull bar. About the spots I'm unsure, perhaps floodlights? Or maybe it's a form of camouflage ;-) -- DhDh.

Yeah, Spots means spotlights or headlight built into the bull bar. This seems to be a cut and paste job from the link mentioned in the article. The copyright should be checked I think. --(WT-en) Caffeine 10:27, 30 Jan 2004 (EST)

You are right about roobar and spots. You will appreciate these terms when you buy a car in Australia because noone will talk about "Bull bar" or "floodlights" ;) It's Ozzy-talk. Don't worry about the copyright- as I am the author from this article on our site, I have published it here (with slight modifications) under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 - --(WT-en) Patrick Awart 08:41, 2nd Feb 2004 (MET)

Bah, what weird part of Australia are you from? :-P --(WT-en) Caffeine 08:50, 3 Feb 2004 (EST)

Weird part? Everywhere in Australia is weird! Patrick's right: no-one speaks about bull bars Down Under. Actually, I came to know the thing by that name, and it'll always be a roobar to me :-)) (WT-en) DhDh 16:38, 3 Feb 2004 (EST)

I call it a bull bar (Yes, I'm Australian), but I'm happy with either name. I'm sure anybody (Well, Australian) would figure it out, even if you called it an Emu Bar :-P --(WT-en) Caffeine 07:09, 12 Feb 2004 (EST)

Of course it is called a bull bar in Australia. Roo bar is more a slang term (which tourists and UK tourism tv programs seem to love). My impression is that bull bar is the normal Australian term for a bull bar, and roo bar is sometimes used for the (uncommon) lightweight grill covers for small passenger vehicles. Do a google search... Bull bar is the normal and most common term that is used, and yes there are lots of cows and bulls in the outback. (WT-en) Melbased 18:30, 16 May 2008 (EDT)

Do you mean "make even money" (break even? neither gain nor lose?) or "even make money"? -(WT-en) phma 07:22, 2 Feb 2004 (EST)

Make money? I don't believe that. I bought a car in Australia twice and I never made money out of it. If you want to you need good commercial skills (both when buying and when selling) *and* lots of time (to look for exactly what you want when buying and to find the right buyer when you're selling). Well, I suppose some people do make money... (WT-en) DhDh 15:24, 3 Feb 2004 (EST)

Well we made money (not a lot but we did ...) with it allthough we did not really inted to do so ;) anyway: Yes, you can make money but I agree it is more luck than anything close to planning ;) *sogh* australia - I want to return *buhu* (WT-en) Patrick Awart 08:41, Feb 12th 2004 (MET)

Same here, mate, same here. I'm not an Aussie and Australia is not my home country, but sometimes I get these bouts of "home"sickness... (WT-en) DhDh 01:51, 12 Feb 2004 (EST)

Source

OK, so I understand the idea behind:

These Rules (Buying a car in Oz) where taken from Brigitte & Patrick'sRTW Travel site. You can find a multiple choice test there to find out what works best for you: BUY OR RENT? And finally there are some examples how it really worked out for other people we met.

But there are a couple of problems with it, which it why it has been removed (again). First, it may be the source of the orginal article, but once it is edited, added to, and otherwise changed by Wikivoyagers, then this statement is no longer true. Already there has been an edit or two to it, so it is not the same as the one from that site.

Second, the first person mention is another non-wiki goal (see Project:Manual of style for more info). Finally, there is something a little ad-ish about it and we don't really go in for "sponsored" articles. Of course, including links to things you've worked on or your home page from your user page is A-OK.

Hope this clarifies things without discouraging you from contributions! It's some good info to have. (WT-en) Majnoona 21:53, 11 Feb 2004 (EST)

Hi Maj! Did you recieve my email? Was there something wrong / unclear with it so that you did not answer it?

As well as I can see your points I guess that this is somewhat incorrect. I am not a picky-lawer or anything but an article of someone does not change copyright just because someone corrected a typo or inserted a word or removed a paragraph ;)

So - in a sense it discourages me but that is nothing you should have to worry about. To me it feels just like leaving "my" room and coming back and finding it in a mess (compared to what I had left it and not necessarily the objective state ;) I guess the line "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly" explains that quite well now! But was that there when I inserted the article? At least I cant recall - but then I might hva just aswell overlooked it.

I would simply have to think more carfully which articles I find suitable for the travelwiki and which ones not ;) This is why I made a first test, to find out! Take care!

(WT-en) Patrick Awart 17:18, Feb 20th 2004 (MET)

Also, many of these points would work well in most countries. --(WT-en) Caffeine 07:09, 12 Feb 2004 (EST)

Global cars

I did a knee-jerk rollback on the global cars notice, but I saw that Ryan had explicitly given a suggestion to put the notice on this page (see User talk:(WT-en) Global1). I'm not sure it meets the "primary source" criterion, but I'm going to let it sit for a while. --(WT-en) Evan 22:53, 22 August 2006 (EDT)

Several of the travel topics have basically become link farms, so this seemed like as good of a place as any to direct someone who has a site that could be of use to travelers but doesn't really fit well with what we would normally link to. I think if we're going to remove the Global1 link from this page then we'd need to remove most of the others as well. -- (WT-en) Ryan 22:57, 22 August 2006 (EDT)

Reviving a four year old discussion..... this is probably the biggest link farm anywhere on Wikivoyage. Can we just burn all those car hire company names followed by a url? We would not allow his in a regular article, so why do we in a travel topic?

There might be a case for retaining any specialist companies who offer something distinctly different from the hundreds of other options. Even then, it should be a proper listing with a phone number, address, description etc.

The list of company names with a url seems to be a fine example of what Wikivoyage says it will not allow --(WT-en) Burmesedays 00:52, 14 May 2010 (EDT)

The entire list seems very spammy. I think my comment above from 2006 pre-dates most of our current policies on external links, so please don't view it as a reason NOT to trim this down. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 01:34, 14 May 2010 (EDT)

I've used this article in the past as an excuse to get rid of car hire and campervan listings from other destination guides. I.e. there is no need to list them everywhere, just in one spot. Reminds me of the attitude taken towards itineraries elsewhere, that is they are mostly crap, so lets keep them out of articles that may are otherwise good. Last time I checked, all of these were primary sources, and not consolidators. Not to say some others haven't crept in. Thats the reasoning, but don't expect me to take any more steps to defend them. --(WT-en) inas 01:47, 14 May 2010 (EDT)

I'll put the few facts that are actually important into the Australia article, and then this can go. The advice on car buying is just obvious really. --(WT-en) inas 01:52, 14 May 2010 (EDT)

All good. Regardless of being primary sources though, a company name with a url and nothing else is not a valid listing anywhere on Wikivoyage. I am forever deleting bland lists of that nature. There does though seem to be an unwritten guideline that normal rules do not apply to travel tropics. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 05:07, 14 May 2010 (EDT)

This article is about to disappear

As a result of the discussions above, failing any strong defenders in the very near future this article will disappear. Content, where it exceeds the obvious, will find a home elsewhere. If you wish to speak in its defences, do so now. --(WT-en) inas 20:26, 25 May 2010 (EDT)

Merge the article, but into Driving in Australia instead of Australia. As far as I can imagine it's quite expensive, time-consuming and otherwise onerous to bring one's own car to Australia from anywhere else so almost everybody planning to drive in Australia would have to rent or buy the car first. (WT-en) Ypsilon 04:21, 23 December 2010 (EST)

Yeah - much of the article has gone already. Most of what remains would apply to buying a car anywhere on the planet for any purpose, except maybe the break even point for buying vs renting. --(WT-en) inas 04:26, 23 December 2010 (EST)