Right to reject a faulty car is judged when the buyer rejects, not after repair
The District Court at Nelson allowed an appeal after finding that a supplier's lack of fault did not prevent a buyer from rejecting a faulty car.
In Blommaert v Rick Armstrong Motors Peugeot Limited [2026] NZDC 14556, the court allowed an appeal from the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal, which had dismissed the buyer's claim.
The buyer paid $63,415 for a new electric vehicle on 15 April 2023. Over the next 17 months, the car developed a series of faults, the most serious being a noisy driveshaft. Neither the dealer, Rick Armstrong Motors Peugeot Limited, nor the vehicle's importer could obtain a replacement because the manufacturer had blocked the part and was redesigning it in Europe. With no date for a repair, the buyer rejected the car on 10 September 2024.
The court accepted that the supplier was not at fault and said its efforts had been hampered by circumstances outside its control. Even so, the court held that a supplier's lack of fault did not remove the buyer's right to reject. The right turned on whether a reasonable time had passed without a successful repair, not on whether the supplier had tried hard enough.
The court found that, judged at the time of rejection, the driveshaft fault, together with the earlier problems, amounted to a failure of substantial character under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993. It said a reasonable buyer who knew about the faults would not have bought the vehicle for $63,000.
The court held that the right to reject had to be assessed at the moment of rejection and not with the benefit of hindsight. A later repair, completed on 5 December 2024, could not undo a rejection that was valid when it was made.
The court also found that the tribunal erred in treating repair as the supplier's main obligation and in reducing the statutory test to a single question about whether the buyer had lost confidence in the vehicle.
The court added that it would have allowed the appeal on a second ground because the buyer had waited more than three months without a repair and without any indication of when a replacement part would arrive.
The court set aside the tribunal's decision, ordered the dealer to refund the purchase price with interest, and awarded costs to the buyer.
