Indholdsfortegnelse for No 370 October 2021 i NZ Classic Car

In this month’s issue, we feature a nearperfect recreation of a Mustang Boss 429 that also features a full Nascar race version of Ford’s legendary 429ci engine instead of the standard road-going version that was offered to the public in 1969 — as if that mighty weapon wasn’t enough. To many, this was Ford’s only Boss Mustang, but there was a smaller, similarly potent machine ready to take on its competitors on the track. At the time, Ford was preparing to take to the Nascar circuits, it had also prepared another race car to compete in the Trans-Am series. As with the Nascar version, in order to comply with the Trans-Am’s Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) racing league rules, participating auto manufacturers had to sell a production version of…

There are more than a few stories beneath the hoods of the three rare cars parked in the workshop out the back of a house in Ophir. Sure, one could focus solely on each of the one-of-a-kind 1934 Bugatti Gangloff Roadster Type 57, the 1907 Sizaire et Naudin, or the 1904 Humber Humberette. Certainly, they are interesting enough vehicles. But it’s perhaps better to approach the machines as lenses on the life of their intriguing former owner. Bob Turnbull died in 2012 at the age of 82. He’d never married, had no long-term partners, nor left behind any children. Yet he left a legacy: memories and tales of a mechanical engineer who had a mind as strong as the blocks of steel with which he played. “A genius,” one friend…

Alfa Romeo has something of a split personality. On one hand, it seems almost incapable of producing an ugly car design — OK, there is the Alfa 75. On the other hand, prior to the 1990s, its vehicles had a reputation for plummeting second-hand values, unreliability, and rust. Nowadays, while it still produces very pretty cars, I am glad to say that Alfa has conquered its demons and improved immeasurably in both reliability and rustproofing — and the brand’s reputation has almost caught up to this fact. This was further confirmed on a recent trip to Napier, when Ian MacPherson invited me to see his 2007 Alfa Romeo Spider. In coupé form it is known as the Brera, itself a greatlooking car, but the muscular lines of the Spider could…

In June 1987 I was teaching and one of my students who knew of my interest in cars said there was a car on display at the local shopping mall I wouldn’t want to miss. “It is an awesome car, Mr H; you have to go and see it.” That is how I came to be standing beside what I believe is one of the best-looking kit cars of all time. They were manufactured in Blenheim by Dick Tierney and sold as kitsets. Dick Tierney, a teacher like me, was building these kits in his spare time. We got talking, and he said he would take me for a ride in the car the next time I was in Blenheim. It took me until 2012 to visit Dick; the car…

In part one of this Ford-flavoured trip down memory lane I recalled a sad and instructive episode when I learned my shortcomings as a car tuner, something that tainted my appreciation of Mk2 Ford Escort vans in particular. Prior to that, I had a couple of other Ford entanglements of slightly more redeeming merit. There were two Mk1 Escorts I had got my hands on: a 1972 1300 XL belonging to my father, and a later, end-of-line, English-assembled 1974 1100, which my partner and I bought from Panmure Motors Ford in Auckland in 1980. Both those cars were the high water mark of my relationship with the Ford Motor Co. I liked the Mk1 Escorts. They were nice, nippy, small cars, particularly the 1300, which handled really well, and had…

The Ford Anglia 105E was quite a departure from the staid British postwar cars. It looked like no other small, mainstream car on British roads — or New Zealand roads for that matter — as it tapped into the exuberant fins and chrome of the jet-age cars pouring out of Detroit. Thanks to its cheesy widesmile grille and angled rear window — which prompted its ‘Anglebox’ nickname — this charming and radicallooking car became one of those cars that works for nearly everyone in every era. “It’s just such a cool-looking car. Everything about Ford’s design looks great: the overall shape and, of course, that back-slanting rear window,” says Anglia fanatic Brendon Hibbs. It makes an interesting comparison with Citroën’s Ami 6, which is charming in a very different way.…

Young Driver, a pre-17 driving school in the UK, has added three British classic cars to its fleet to give youngsters a taste of ‘mechanical sympathy’. Ten to 17-year olds will be able to sample the driving dynamics of a Vauxhall VX490, Morris Minor, or Austin 7. Adults keen to reminisce are also welcome. Working with the British Motor Museum in Gaydon, Warwickshire, Young Driver will run events once or twice a month from October, with more venues planned. The 1963 VX490 HB, with just 21,000 miles on the clock, is a rare example of Vauxhall’s top sporting saloon of the ’60s, complete with wood dash, sports gearbox, and six ancillary gauges. It is one of only 10 currently registered. The 1934 Austin 7 Ulster Replica is lively and fun…

Wellington-based Vaughan Wilson’s daily driver is this 1971 V8 Bronco wagon. He bought it out of Texas in 2019 as a promotional vehicle for one of his companies. It arrived with the usual issues normally associated with American vehicles — shortcuts on things that shouldn't have had shortcuts. Throwing money at it solved all of these, and it got its certification for driving on New Zealand roads. A spanner, four guys, and a lot of grunting removed the roof, which was never put back on. Otherwise, it looks as it did when it arrived. Vaughan drives it most days (if it isn’t raining) and parks it in the Wellington CBD. It really gets noticed. People stop and take photos and it helps with the company branding. Its oversized tyres and…

Build what you race and race what you build. That was Ford’s philosophy when it designed a new engine to compete with Chrysler’s big block 426ci Hemi engine, which was dominating Nascar racing during the late ’60s. Ford decided to join the party by creating the ‘now legendary Boss 429 engine from its existing 385ci engine, which already boasted such components as four-bolt main caps, a forged steel crank, and forged steel connecting rods. The new engine also received a set of aluminium cylinder heads with a semi-hemispherical type of combustion chamber, which Ford nicknamed ‘the crescent’. It was designed and built from bottom to top as an all-out racing engine, but it could not take to the Nascar circuits until Ford had used a minimum number of engines in…

There are no more defining or memorable Ferrari design cues than a pair of twin circular tail lights, which find their echo in the rear valance in two pairs of circular exhaust tips. Introduced fifty years ago by Pininfarina designer Leonardo Fioravanti, this charismatic Ferrari identifier has more than stood the test of time. They first appeared on the Dino 206, and then on the 365 GTB/4 Daytona, two of Signor Fioravanti’s most revered designs. Unlike Pininfarina’s trademark slim vertical tail lights of the 1960s, which subsequently found their way onto the mass-produced Austins, Morrisses, and Peugeots of the period, the twin circular tail lamps remain emblematic of Ferrari supercars and sports cars. Some earlier Corvettes copied them, and they have been partially mimicked by Golf Mark V and Honda…

In part one, last month, Steve Horne told us he got a call from driver Bobby Rahal saying he was going into IndyCars. Steve told him he knew nothing about them and, in any event, he was burnt out. Then Jim Trueman, former Can-Am driver and businessman, entered the picture and told Steve he wanted to build a team to win the Indy 500. But, said Steve, there was nothing — no workshop, nothing. “It was one hell of a challenge … I’ll do it,” he says. Trueman handed Steve $50,000 to get under way, prior to heading off on a skiing trip. “I spent that in a day and then told his PAI needed another $85,000 urgently. When I was told that she couldn’t authorise that sort of money,…

F1's first visit to sin city threw up a title decider with three drivers in contention There are many wonderful circuits that Formula 1 no longer visits and while the Dutch seaside village of Zandvoort hosts a round of the 2021 World Championship (for the first time since 1985) the track is a truncated version of its original excellence. Kyalami, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, has also been shortened but in its heyday was a much-anticipated event, both for the track layout and the sunshine inevitably on offer early in the year. A place where sun could never be guaranteed in early October was at Watkins Glen in upstate New York but it was widely touted as ‘the richest race on the calendar’ and irrespective of weather, was greatly anticipated.…

Brian Ford is a name well known to many for his range of Briford standard and custom trailers but the self-taught Christchurch engineer has another side to his busy lifestyle: kit cars, motorcycles, and, lastly, a small production run of the attractive Briford sports cars he manufactured back in the 1980s, which featured in New Zealand Classic Car magazine in November 2016. One of the interesting cars in Brian’s workshop is a sports car he believes was one of special builder Noel Ching’s kit cars. “Alan Watson built the first car in ’55–’56 but never named it. He finally got it going in 1957. It had a split windscreen, it was Ford 10 based, and Alan cut doors in the bodywork. He then sold the mould to Noel Ching in…

LAST CHANCE TO ENTER TARGA NEW ZEALAND TIME TRIAL Got a classic sports car and want to give it a decent run on closed roads? The Targa New Zealand Time Trial, happening in October in the central North Island, is the event for you! The five-day or optional two-day time trial is run alongside the Targa New Zealand tarmac rally, which takes place from 26–30 October 2021. The Targa event is now a New Zealand institution for competitive roadregistered sports cars kitted out with roll cages and all the other competition equipment. There’s also the accompanying Targa Tour which caters for GT cars that don’t have all the racing gubbins but which are still driven in spirited fashion. In recent years, that has become dominated by modern highperformance cars, and…

ISBN 978-1-787115-12-5 Published 2021 by Veloce, which provided the review copy Prolific local author and historic racing saloon enthusiast Steve Holmes has had a number of books published in New Zealand and this is his second title for UK imprint Veloce. Following on from his Racing Mustangs book, he brings us a similar one on GM’s ‘pony car’: the Camaro. It’s a 176-page hardback that displays plenty of thorough research and a terrific selection of photos — almost 300 of them — showing Camaros racing during their heyday, with an emphasis on the Trans-Am series of races in North America. Camaros probably weren’t as widely raced as their Ford counterpart, so the bulk of the book features races in the USA and Canada. However, some European and down-under versions get…

SURVIVOR STATUS In 1987, the owner of this outstanding Ferrari 328 travelled to Maranello, Italy, to take delivery. He probably didn’t suspect that almost three-and-a-half decades later he’d still be the custodian of this fine Italian steed. In next month’s issue, we take a close look at this stunning time machine — one that can and does transport the driver to a period of history when the volumes of excess were greater than the volumes of common sense, when champagne was used as bathwater, and anyone with a good idea could make a million by going public with a share float. So, not much different to today, then, give or take a pandemic or two — except that crowdfunding has replaced shares, and ideas are usually for apps — although…

New Zealand was barely out of its colonial nappies when, in the 1930s, twin brothers Bill and Bob Turnbull started primary school in a small country town in Central Otago. For early callers, the rigours of transforming our country into what at first became a British farm had been hard enough. However, the recession of the 1930s made life even more trying — and for the twins, tragically so; when they were aged just seven, their mother died. Three years later the boys were tested further when their father, Alistair, enlisted to fight for the mother country. That he was a widower with young children allowed for dispensation, but Alistair elected to ‘do the right thing’. Housekeepers and an aunt substituted for the boys’ late mother. The recession of the…

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Fancy a first-generation EB1 Honda Civic that is close to half a century old or a tidy and original 1971 Toyota Corolla KE20 four-door sedan? Tidy examples are no longer bargain basement motoring. On the plus side, buy now and they could actually appreciate instead of having to be thrown away. Ordinary older cars of almost any description are on the move price wise. Classic car values are on the rise — along with other assets such as property and share prices in these low interest rate times — and increasingly the best vehicles are moving out of reach of drivers into the hands of collectors and investors. But this is not the only reason for the cost of more modest older cars to have firmed up. Younger people who…

First, I do not have a Facebook page nor do I want one, but I can and do follow some of the ‘public’ pages of interest, especially if they are car related. So it was that on 6 August my lovely wife came bursting into the lounge and blurted out that soon any sort of fluid leak in a vehicle would be a ‘fail’ for a Warrant of Fitness (WOF)! “Goodness gracious!” I exclaimed — actually what I said was, “Whiskey tango foxtrot!” The offending comment is reproduced here, but with no Facebook page identifier. It read: “There’s a very strong rumour within the WOF-issuing fraternity that quite soon our pride and joys will fail WOF if there is so much as a fluid leak. Apparently, even if there are…

CONCOURS — LIKE LOCKDOWN — CAN MEAN DIFFERENT THINGS To me, for a car to be in ‘concours’ condition means that it is presented ‘as close to its original factory specification as is possible.’ Cars are, of course, only original once and it is practically impossible to recreate that factory originality, regardless of how good the restorer is. Factory paint, for example, is rarely as flawless or as shiny as some restored cars are presented. At the end of the day, a car is a commodity built down to a price, and that price doesn’t allow perfection. So, to be judged fairly in a concours event, shouldn’t the car be ‘as close to its original factory specification as is possible?’ I see in your excellent magazine reports of cars that…

Attractions Exhibitions, museums and other vehicle-related curios Marlborough OMAKA CLASSIC CARS A unique collection of vehicles giving insight into New Zealand Motoring from the 50s to the 80s. 90 cars on display at any one time. omakaclassiccars.co.nz / 03 577 9419 / Aerodome Rd, Blenheim Coatings Heatproof, cosmetic, chrome, and specialist coatings & water transfer printing Auckland HIGH PERFORMANCE COATINGS Exhaust coatings, piston coatings, turbo coatings, and much more hpcoatings.co.nz / 09 267 1007 / Unit 0/62 Mahia Road, Manurewa, Auckland HP COATINGS New Zealand’s leading performance coating specialists, serving you over 20 years hpcoatings.co.nz / 09 267 1007 / Unit 0/62 Mahia Rd, Manurewa, Auckland Consumables Oils, additives fluids, fuels and workshop consumables Auckland RECHARGE BATTERIES Battery revitalizer and conditioner recharge.net.nz / 0800 36 66 36 / PO Box…