Anyway, NZ was beautiful and it's summer there. The driving was fun too 
I spent two days driving down from Auckland to Wellington stopping to hike to Cathedral Cove on the Coromandel peninsula and stopping to stay the night in Rotorua with its many geo thermal hot springs. Passed by Lake Taupo on the way down as well. On the return trip up the island, drove the west coast around Mt. Taranaki to New Plymouth for a pretty cool evening at their summer Festival of Lights event. North of there, hiked some caves and took a short boat ride in an underground water way in their Glow Worm caves. Not a huge Lord of the Rings fan so I skipped on visiting Hobbiton, however did see many of the sites and props around the island that were filmed in the movie. As far as the driving, I took to driving on the wrong side of the road pretty quickly. Round abouts are pretty much all they use for intersections. The highway is rarely ever more than a winding two lane road lined with endless rolling green pasture lands for sheep and cattle farming or in the case where there is still forest, its' very lush and almost tropical looking with the tree ferns. Lots of fun, wish I had my Kizashi! Speed limit was almost always 100 km and never more. And even with only one lane in each direction, there was rarely congestion. There are picnic areas along the road but no toilets until you get to a town and it's usually just the petrol station toilets, which buy the way are cleaner and nicer than most any gas station bathrooms or highway rest stops I've ever used in the states. Petrol by the way averaged about $1.70/litre NZD. I calculated that to be about $4.50/gal. USD, and that's with a favorable US conversion rate of $0.65 USD to $1.00 NZD.
Our rental was a Honda Odyssey, which had room for the family. The Odyssey in NZ is a wagon, not a minivan like in the US. Wagons are very popular there with the Odyssey probably the most popular car on the island. There are NO full sized trucks either. The Ford Ranger is the most popular selling pick up there now. It looks good too but we wont likely see it here in the US. It competes with lots of other mid size pickups like the Toyota Hilux, Holden Colorado and even a VW Amarok, I never new VW had a new truck. Also popular are Vans, non of which I've ever seen in the states, even by brands that do sell vans in the states. Among full sized sedans Holden is king, but Ford has a fairly good presence too, although some models I've never seen in the States, look up the Falcon and Falcon UTE. And of course, for every sedan in NZ, there's a wagon version available too. Almost every one has a hitch on their car, not just on pick ups and SUVs, to pull a small trailer, I guess that makes up for not having as many trucks. And of all the car makes there that don't have a presence in the US, the only one I never heard of at all before was SsangYoung...from Korea I found out. Cars noticeably absent or largely unseen at least besides full size trucks is anything Dodge/Chrysler, Camaros, Corvettes, Mustangs...popular American muscle. They do have their fair share of rear wheel drive cars in the Holden line up, of which we are importing and branding under the Chevy badge for the Police Caprice and the Super Sport. All Chevy models sold there are under the Holden Badge i.e. the Holden Cruze(in wagon form even!)
As far as Suzuki, the Swift there is very popular and there were quite a few Kizashi's, more than I've ever seen on the US west coast at least. Non I noticed had sport trim.
We'll that was a bit long, just thought I'd share!
