The NZ car-spotting app
Log the cars you spot, find out how many are left in NZ, and show your mates.
Spotto keeps a count against every car in its catalogue: how many are still registered nationally, and how many in your own region. So you know whether the car you just saw was a genuine find or just another Commodore. Then say which Commodore, because of the 73,307 still registered, only 70 are the original VB.
Get Spotto on your Android phone. Free.
On an iPhone or a computer? Try it in your browser instead: the web version takes a free account. Free to spot, log, and collect, always.
Join the Android test. Three steps, about a minute:
On a computer? Steps 1 and 2 work here too, then install from the Play Store on your phone. Android testers get the app first, and get to tell us everything wrong with it. Stuck? Write to hello@spotto.kiwi.
Free to spot, log, and collect, always.
No Android phone? Use Spotto in your browser — free, with an account.
Three real spots, each on its count card. Log a car with a photo and you get one of your own to share. Spotted and photographed by Lilyspeed.
The count
Every number in Spotto comes off the Motor Vehicle Register, and the register is typed in by hand, one car at a time, however the person at the counter heard it. So before Spotto counts a car, it puts every spelling of it back together.
Mazda MX-5
7,179 still registered
UncommonNA 3,225 · NB 1,380 · NC 1,721 · ND 850
1,037found by searching
for "MX-5"
7,179MX-5s actually
on the road
That's one in seven. If a lookup site has ever told you your car is one of a handful, this is usually why: it counted a spelling, not the car.
How many MX-5s are left, by generation and year · How many are left of 83 more cars · The rarest cars still on NZ roads
Every car gets the same treatment. Across 4.67 million cars, vans and utes, the register writes make and model 27,174 different ways. Spotto sorts 97.4% of those vehicles into 3,044 cars you'd recognise, and leaves the rest out rather than guess.
Together, but not blurred. Putting the MX-5 back together doesn't lose the detail: the breakdown still tells an NA from an ND, each with its own count and grade.
Recounted every month. Waka Kotahi publishes a new register each month, and Spotto recounts every car against it. A grade only moves when two months in a row agree, so one car being scrapped or re-registered doesn't flip it back and forth.
Where it comes from. The Motor Vehicle Register, published by Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency under CC BY 4.0. The cleaning up is ours.
Grades
A grade comes from one number: how many of that car are currently registered in New Zealand, according to the public Motor Vehicle Register.
The first time you log a car, it pays points by its grade. Each grade pays three times the one below, so we count in Corollas: a Rare is worth thirty of them.
Seen it before? One more point a day. A car you've already logged pays a point on each day you spot it again. A car park full of the same Corolla still pays once.
A grade is not a valuation. Please don't price a car off one.
It measures survivors, not sales. The register is a snapshot of what's on the road today, not how many were ever sold here. For spotting, that's the number that matters.
The spread is lopsided. Most entries come out Rare, Super rare or Unicorn, because most distinct models on New Zealand roads really are thin on the ground. There is one adjustment: the two rarest grades are held back for cars whose whole nameplate is rare, so a thin version of an everyday car tops out at Rare.
Found the rare one? You get the difference. Log a Skyline, then come back with a photo of an R32 GT-R, and the Skyline's 10 points become the GT-R's 100. It counts for a badge or a generation two grades rarer than the car, with a photo.
Nothing to spend. Points are a score, not a currency. They don't buy or unlock anything, and challenges and likes don't pay any. The leaderboards use the same numbers, counting each car once.
The first three are the licence stages. The last takes a lifetime.
Eleven collecting themes, each in Bronze, Silver, Gold and Legend, counted in different cars rather than sightings.
Which one
Most cars in the catalogue open up: generation first, then the badge, then the engine, each with its own count off the register. Go as far down as you can tell from the footpath.
The rarer answer wins, within reason. Log it as a Skyline and it's Common. Say it was an R34 GT-R and it's Rare. A generation or a badge counts when it is at least two grades rarer than the car it belongs to. An engine on its own never does.
It goes a long way down. There are 10,018 Mustangs on the register. Three of them are SN95 Bullitts.
Search by whatever it says on the boot. Half our fleet arrived wearing its Japanese name. Type Fielder and you get the Corolla's Fielder, all 22,702 of them. Type Axela and you get the Mazda 3, with a count for each name: 67,183 Axelas and 31,888 Mazda3s. Type Prius c and you get the Aqua, and the 2,752 that say otherwise.
Change your mind later. If you work out what it was when you get home, you can set it then.
Your patch
Every car gets a grade for your region as well as nationally. The thresholds are scaled to each region's fleet, so Auckland's size doesn't make everything look common there, and Southland's doesn't make everything look rare.
“Scarce nationally, but 5.8× more common in Southland than the national average.”
| Region | Compared with the national average |
|---|---|
| Auckland | |
| Waikato | |
| Bay of Plenty | |
| Manawatū-Whanganui | |
| Canterbury | |
| Otago | |
| Southland |
Northland, Gisborne, Hawke's Bay, Taranaki, Wellington, Tasman, Nelson, Marlborough and the West Coast each have fewer than 30 registered, so the app shows the national grade there rather than a number it can't support.
Backwards
Our fleet came out of Japan, Britain, Australia and our own assembly lines, and a left-hand-drive car generally can't be registered here until it's twenty years old. So the rarity you've absorbed from the internet runs backwards on this side of the world.
131 still registered
RareUbiquitous in the US, near-absent here.
257 still registered
ScarceCommon US muscle, effectively absent from NZ roads.
120 still registered
RareNever sold in North America.
22,323 still registered
CommonNever sold in Europe or North America.
131Ford Mustangs
(Fox-body)
183Nissan Skyline
GT-Rs (R33)
There are fewer Fox-body Mustangs on New Zealand's register than R33 GT-Rs. Try telling that to anyone in Ohio.
Mates
That's what your mates will say, so show them. With an account, Spotto has a feed: share a spot with your friends or with everyone on Spotto, collect the likes, argue about the badge in the comments, and message the one person who'll actually care.
The rest of this page works without an account.
shotgun_spotterHonda Integra
Add friend
23 likes
shotgun_spotter Called shotgun for exactly this reason.
Type R (DC2) Rare
View all 4 comments
19 SEPTEMBER
An orange DC2? Photo or it didn't happen.
Check the feed.
Every share starts friends-only. Switch it to Everyone and anyone on Spotto can see it, like it and comment on it. Your region stays with your friends either way.
The app strips the location out of the picture before it's sent, and lets you black out anything you'd rather not share.
Double-tap to like. A like is just a like: it never counts towards the leaderboard, a streak or a badge.
Direct messages, with photos and GIFs from your keyboard. For when "you'll never guess what I just saw" won't wait.
Scan their QR code in the paddock, or send them a link.
Ranked on the points your finds are worth, each car once. A rare badge only counts on the board if the spot has a photo.
Three steps
A Chaser in the next lane, or a Hillman sitting in someone's driveway. Pull over before you get your phone out. Nothing in the catalogue is worth a crash. Or surely you've got a passenger who can take the photo for you, right?
Pick it out of 3,044 cars, then say which one if you can tell: they open up into 11,604 generations, badges and engines. "Not sure" is always an answer. Add a photo and a note, and save. It works one-handed, with no signal, and without an account.
You get a national grade and a grade for your own region. When the two disagree, that's usually the interesting part. And if the badge on the boot is much rarer than the car it's bolted to, the rarer grade is the one you get.
Spotted
All taken from the side of the road here, with the count against each one as the app has it.
Ford Customline
134 still registered
Rare
Honda NSX
68 still registered
Rare
Volkswagen Golf GTI
6,540 still registered
Uncommon
Honda Integra Type R (DC2)
128 still registered
Rare
Honda S660 (JW5)
44 still registered
Rare
Suzuki Cappuccino (EA11R)
45 still registered
RareDaily
Three every day, at easy, medium and stretch. The easy one is built to be done on an ordinary commute. Your streak forgives one missed day in seven, because some Sundays it just rains.
A challenge pays the streak, not points: the day is the reward. Your firsts earn milestones along the way.
The kind of thing you'll be asked for
Yours
Your own car is in there somewhere, probably down to the badge. It might not be the news you were hoping for.
Get Spotto on your Android phone. Free.
Three steps, about a minute. On an iPhone or a computer? Try it in your browser instead.
No Android phone? Use Spotto in your browser — free, with an account.