Vehicles had to comply with the Year 2000 Emission Standard, which had been phased in from the middle of last year, Mr Pay said.
This had resulted in mainly latemodel cars being imported, which meant the price tag was not much cheaper than that on a new vehicle, which resulted in fewer vehicles being imported, Mr Pay said.
The business used to carry out between 40 and 60 emission compliance tests a month, but from January until this week the business had only carried out 12 compliance tests, he said.
‘‘We lost a lot of income,'' Mr Pay said.
Independent Vehicle Services was the only business in Eastern Southland that carried out the testing, Mr Pay said.
However, the business had picked up work in other sectors including general repairs.
Charlton Auto had experienced financial boom times for the last couple of years, but the global recession meant the business has come out of that exceptional high and now trading is where it was about three years ago.
Charlton Auto owner Paul Muir said last year was ‘‘fantastic - right up until the Olympic Games'' in Beijing when the world economy started to crash.
However, this year had been ‘‘up and down'', Mr Muir said.
‘‘It's really good one week then you wonder where everyone has gone, then it will take off again,'' Mr Muir said.
However, he said the business was still ‘‘doing well''.
Co-owner Cathy Borthwick said the downturn had meant the business had looked for ways to diversify and one of those was the selling of vehicle lights to the domestic market.
The lights were sent to a distributor and sold nationwide.
The business stocked used vehicle parts as well as some new parts, he said.
Customers had been cautious. While they had been buying parts as they needed them, they had put off carrying out regular routine maintenance until it was really necessary, he said.
When enjoying the boom times it was easy ‘‘to lose sight of how things used to be'', he said.
MGM Auto owner Melvin Gentle said winter was traditionally a quieter time of year and this year was no different.
The trend over the past few years was that people were not prepared to spend money on larger repairs.
Instead they were either buying a cheaper replacement vehicle or they had more than one car per family so if one broke down they were not replacing the vehicle, Mr Gentle said.
The exception was the car enthusiasts who spent ‘‘big money'' on custom cars.
Some people made arrangements to pay accounts off and there appeared to be a slight increase in the number of people getting payments for repairs from Work and Income, Mr Gentle said.
Tapanui's Wylies Garage owner Keith Falconer said while there were fluctuations in business it was still ‘‘quite busy''.
‘‘The fluctuations were pretty much on par with last year,'' Mr Falconer said.
He thought the fact that Blue Mountain Lumber had laid off workers might have had a negative effect on the business.
However, while there had been some effect, it was not as dramatic as first thought, he said.
Russell Keeler Automotive owner Russell Keeler said the economic recession had not really hit the business, but it did not have the same amount of backlog jobs waiting.
‘‘It hasn't really hit. On the whole we're still as busy as we were,'' Mr Keeler said.
However, he was not selling the volume of luxury accessory items as he once had been, he said.
