@RallyWrench said in Where to put the Kiwis?:
Also also, the NZ-specific swaybars being made in Australia is curious, because to this day pretty much the only company to make upgrade bars for this car is Whiteline.
I was working for Subaru NZ during roughly that period (86-87) and if Toyota NZ and other OEMs doing local assembly were anything like us, almost all their local content would have been interior parts, along with some smaller injection molded and sheet metal bits, and alloy wheels (Ford had a wheel casting plant which supplied everybody). There may well not have been any suppliers in NZ capable of doing sway bars and similar heavy metal work to OEM standards. Whereas Australia’s auto industry was strong enough and protected enough that they had a full range of OEM and aftermarket suppliers. Aussie manufactured counted as “local” content under our trade agreement of the time, so while that wasn’t the cheapest solution, it was pretty normal to go there if you needed something you couldn’t get at home.
It wouldn’t have been Whiteline though - they didn’t exist till the 90s.