NZ Hillman Avenger census - How many Avengers left in NZ

[avenga]

Hi guys.

Recently I have found out that you can download a list of all vehicles that are still registered or have their rego on hold.

https://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/new-zealand-motor-vehicle-register-statistics/new-zealand-vehicle-fleet-open-data-sets/

So I have downloaded the data and come up with a little census of all the Avengers left in NZ.

I'll start off with the total then break it down.

Total: 276 Avengers!!!

Breakdown by body type

Saloon: 245
Wagon: 28
Van: 3

Breakdown by year

1970: 2
1971: 8
1972: 17
1973: 20
1974: 51
1975: 49
1976: 35
1977: 14
1978: 24
1979: 24
1980: 30
1981: 2

Breakdown by engine size

1300: 62
1500: 66
1600: 144
Repowered and certed cars
1725: 2
2000: 1
3968: 1 (My V8 Wagon)

Breakdown by colour

Black: 4
Blue: 44
Brown: 58
Cream: 6
Gold: 16
Green: 33
Grey: 3
Orange: 30
Purple: 2
Red: 34
White: 20
Yellow: 26

Other interesting facts

Avengers converted to CNG: 5
The Vans do have a different body type number. It's 41 for saloon, 45 for wagon and 48 for van

I was going to break it down in to transmission type also, but that is quite hard because a lot of the cars have their engine number written down as their chassis number so I can't decode the chassis number.

Note: Some of these might have been recorded incorrectly at the time of registration, especially the 1725 Avengers.

This also doesn't include deregistered Avengers but I would say that at this stage they are unlikely to get back on the road. It also includes Avengers that have their rogo on hold. I know I have one that is on hold which is on this list but is only a parts car, so it will never run again.

So I would say the number of Avengers left running and on the road would be quite a bit less than these numbers but it is still good to know how many Avengers there still are in the system.

If you want to find your car in the database then the easiest way to do it is to search by the engine number on your tag. You can look this up on Carjam also. You can't search by chassis number because they only show the first 7 digits which in the Avengers are the option codes i.e BK1M41 for a 75 Avenger 1300. I was able to find all my Avengers by their engine numbers. Even found that my old rally car Avenger, which was my first car is still in the system and still has it's rego on hold

[avenga]

Found another interesting fact in the database. They started selling wagons in NZ in 1974 but all of the 1974 wagons were imported from the UK. In 1975 Todd motors started locally manufacturing the wagons. There are 9 1974 UK imported wagons left registered, the rest are NZ assembled. And interestingly 1974 has the most wagons left with 9, followed by 5 1978's, then 4 for the 80 and 75, only 3 76's left, and only 1 of 77 and 79. Pretty cool that we still have at least one from every year left.

There is only one other gold wagon, a 1976 from New Plymouth. I would really like to track that down.

[JoKer]

Interesting (but not unsurprising) these mirror closely the results of our "What year is your Avenger" Poll here

http://www.avenger.co.nz/forum/index.php?topic=222.0


 


with 60 taking part

[JoKer]

another Wagonite


 


seeking parts (interesting Headlight config)

am sending him this forums info now

[avenga]

That ain't a wagon! That's Maggie. Mikey's AKA "79Estate" old Avenger Van. One of only 3 Vans left!!!

http://www.avenger.co.nz/forum/index.php?topic=228.0

Hamish has been trying to arrange a meet up with the new owner. I went and saw the van like 8 years ago. Really cool history. Used to belong to an old lady who ran Parkers Pies, it was her pie delivery van

See if you can get him to get in contact with be because I should be able to help him out with wagon parts, I don't have facebook

[Aitkenb]

Interesting stats! It's been years since I last saw an Avenger around Canterbury. My two wagons are both 'on hold' at present. One red and the other an appealing shade of brown. Interesting to learn that the red one, which I'm currently restoring (a 1974 'super') was likely imported from the UK. I'm the second owner, purchased in the late 90's as my first car from a great uncle. I've had a lot of great adventures in this car and hopefully a few more to be had once it's back on the road.     

[JoKer]

Interesting to learn that the red one, which I'm currently restoring (a 1974 'super') was likely imported from the UK.

does it look like this car by any chance?

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_Q9TvcnfTH/

[avenga]

Interesting to learn that the red one, which I'm currently restoring (a 1974 'super') was likely imported from the UK.

That's is correct. All of the 1974 wagons were imported from UK. You can tell by the chassis number. What is your chassis number start with? if it's something like BH7M45#### then it's NZ, if it's R then a big long number it's UK.

Also, we didn't have different trims of wagons here, so we didn't have a "Super" wagon, so that's another hint it is UK

[avenga]

does it look like this car by any chance?

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_Q9TvcnfTH/

FYI, he is the one who commented on that instagram post Aitkenb = shaitken_bake

We should probably start a thread for peoples instagram handles under the introductions section of the forum

[JoKer]

It's census Year here in NZ and I've just found the CARJAM data : does it co-relate? [edit : 351 - 276 = 75 x MORE Avengers potentially Exist on the NZTA Database  ]

https://www.carjam.co.nz/nz-fleet/?order_by=count_desc&year=&make=HILLMAN&model=Avenger

(I'm in the process of making a csv / spreadsheet with the Data LOL

and yes I appreciate the irregularities of the CARJAM / NZTA info

(eg my GSL is Reg'd as a SLS and so forth etc)

and I cant find it on this initial (sorted by year) List

and I don't think Hillmen Alpines in the 70's were the Sunbeams.... soo Data mostly correct?

and there are some Variants that we cannot be SURE are not Hunters such as the "GL" and AUTOGL denotion


https://www.carjam.co.nz/nz-fleet/?order_by=count_desc&year=&make=HILLMAN&model=gl

though I have now included them

and I note some "Spikes" on years : perhaps they are 'double counting" these :/ throwing my #'s out

1976 HILLMAN ALPINE SLS
Orange Saloon
HN6783

ahh i see why [editing this post as I discover and add the variants]

removed OBVIOUS duplicates : chur for taking time to proof read here AVENGA (I did think 357 was a tad High > 208 and there must be more 80's hiding to get to your 250'ish

Make	Model	Year	#
HILLMAN	AVENGER	1970	2
HILLMAN	AVENGER	1971	8
HILLMAN	AVENGER	1972	15
HILLMAN	AVENGER	1973	11
HILLMAN	ALPINE	1973	4
HILLMAN	ALPINEBH5H41	1973	1
HILLMAN	AVENGER	1974	37
HILLMAN	AVENGER ESTA	1974	3
HILLMAN	AVENGER SUPE	1974	2
HILLMAN	AVENGER GLS	1974	2
HILLMAN	AVENGER GL	1974	2
HILLMAN	AVENGER ALPI	1974	2
HILLMAN	AVENGER ESTA	1974	3
HILLMAN	AVENGER SUPE	1974	2
HILLMAN	AVENGER GLS	1974	2
HILLMAN	AVENGER GL	1974	2
HILLMAN	AVENGER ALPI	1974	2
HILLMAN	GLS	1974	1
HILLMAN	AVENGER	1975	33
HILLMAN	AVENGER ALPI	1975	4
HILLMAN	AVENGER 1300	1975	4
HILLMAN	AVENGERR	1975	1
HILLMAN	AVENGER ALPI	1975	4
HILLMAN	AVENGER 1300	1975	4
HILLMAN	AVENGERR	1975	1
HILLMAN	GLAUTO	1975	1
HILLMAN	AUTO GL	1975	1
HILLMAN	GL	1975	2
HILLMAN	AVENGER	1976	25
HILLMAN	AVENGER SUPE	1976	2
HILLMAN	AVENGER SUPE	1976	2
HILLMAN	ALPINE SLS	1976	1
HILLMAN	ALPINE	1976	1
HILLMAN	AVENGER	1977	10
HILLMAN	GLAUTO	1977	1
HILLMAN	AVENGER	1978	6
HILLMAN	AVENGER TIGER	1978	1
HILLMAN	AVENGER TIGER	1978	1
HILLMAN	AVENGER	1980	2
Total on CARJAM			208

[avenga]

Those numbers are way out because you have somehow added duplicated a lot of the years

Like 1974 year "HILLMAN AVENGER 1974 37" is listed twice, as is a few other years.

The basic carjam search comes to 187 Hillman's and 71 Chryslers. Which comes to 258, 18 short of what I found in the LTSA database.

I found those other 18 by doing seaches and fitlter in Chassis number pattern batching, like B??M4?? to find any mid price range Avenger's I missed. Then I repeated that for with B??H4?? to find any missed high price range Avengers, this found me another 6 Avengers. Finally I did a sort by all Hillman's and Chrysler's between 1970 and 1981 then manually looked for any that has been misspelt. This found be me another 12 which got my total up to 276.

When I originally did this research it took me about a week of crunching the database to find every last one. And I think that is within the margin of error. It might be slightly lower now because I know we have lost a couple since I did my big crunch of the database, but I just spent a couple of hours double checking the LTSA database CSV and easily found 265 Avengers. The rest I are misnamed ones that I would have to either find again or compare on my old database to see if they are still active. But I can safely say there are between 265 and 276 Avengers left in New Zealand

[JoKer]

100% correct LOL what a mess

Edited the post & yep without he duplicates (and extra searching) CarJAM can only basically "see"

Drum roll...

208x 70's Avengers