Indholdsfortegnelse for No 396 November/December 2024 i NZ Classic Car

We’re winding down for the holidays, and it’s time to be with family and friends. The publishing team at Rusty Media Ltd wish you all a safe and happy Christmas and New Year. Grab a copy of New Zealand Classic Car and The Shed, our sister publication, for a great holiday read. Save with a subscription; the mags make great stocking fillers! WORTH THE WAIT! It was the worst-kept secret, but finally it has been announced: Liam Lawson will have a chance to show his mettle in Formula 1 with Red Bull Racing. Liam’s first test will be the US Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, over 18–19 October. I’m looking forward to seeing Liam back behind the wheel after not racing competitively for 11 months.…

The new Fiat 500 F’s arrival in New Zealand coincided with upheaval, an acrimonious agency ownership struggle, and political intrigue involving the granting of franchise rights and government import licensing for the Fiat brand locally. From the 1950s until 1961, the licence for the importation of Fiats for assembly under the import licensing scheme was held by Vic Bedford’s Campbell Motors and two other regional firms. The cars imported were mainly Fiat 600 sedans and an occasional Multipla – a small people carrier. Then, in 1957, the Labour prime minister, Sir Walter Nash, introduced tight import restrictions following a sharp fall in export earnings. In his book Bambina: The Fiat 500 in New Zealand, Todd Niall relates how the record ledger for Campbell Motors has a significant notation in it…

2024 McLAREN 675 LT The current crop of McLaren road cars can be traced back to Bruce, daily driving his own M6 GT throughout England during the latter half of the 1960s. You then can’t ignore the coveted and legendary F1, which, for many, is not only the greatest McLaren road car ever but also one of the greatest cars ever built, period! However, the car that really set the wheels turning for mainstream McLaren road car production was the MP4-12C, launched in 2011. The 12C, along with its 650S successor in 2014, took aim at the likes of Ferrari and Lamborghini. While the cars were immensely fast and capable, some argued that they were lacking in terms of excitement and driving entertainment. In 2015, McLaren responded to this with…

Apprentices Jesse Rawson (22) and Jonte Clark (19) are rare these days, with restoration companies struggling to find young people with an aptitude for the industry. However, Auto Restorations in Christchurch has taken on these two young people, who are passionate about their work and are regular participants in vintage car rallies and trials such as the Irishman Rally. Jesse Rawson, in his first year of a three-year apprenticeship, explains that he has always had an interest in old cars: “My father drove old cars as his daily drivers and I just grew up around them, helping Dad chop them up in the backyard. It was fun, too, getting those cars back on the road, then getting dropped off at school and hearing the kids go, ‘Wow! Look at that…

The Saker SVS is not the first car built by John Davies nor will it be the last, but it is probably his most difficult build and definitely the most ambitious. He bought his first homebuilt car, a Mistral, when he was about 16 – around 50 years ago. It needed a lot of work and, as he was not allowed to work on it in his parents’ garage, he used to work on it on the street outside his house. He drove it and worked on it for about two years, then decided to swap the engine. At the time, he knew almost nothing about cars other than that if you put them together in the opposite order that they were pulled apart, they should still work. It was…

Seven decades ago, Austin’s A90 Westminster caused a sensation by becoming the first motor vehicle to travel from the North Cape in Europe to the southern tip of Africa. Here was an everyday British saloon, without the aid of four-wheel drive or today’s technology, tackling some of the most appalling conditions to complete a gruelling 28,000km drive. Richard Pape, a feisty Yorkshireman, was the man behind the wheel, and a more determined soul would be difficult if not impossible to find. A Royal Air Force (RAF) navigator during World War II, his plane was shot down during a bombing raid on Berlin, and Pape spent three years in a German prisoner of war camp, working on and endeavouring to complete escape plans, before finally succeeding on his fourth attempt. In…

If you are planning a big OE or a business trip to the States this summer, you may need a few hours’ layover in Los Angeles before going on to your ultimate destination. After all, 13 hours in the air – even in business class – takes its toll. If you schedule connecting flights too close together, you could be courting disaster at one of America’s busiest airports. Often, an overnighter in LA is a prudent choice. PEBBLE BEACH WINNERS If you have, or can make, the time, I recommend to my fellow petrolheads that they visit the Zimmerman Automobile Driving Museum, which is 3km from the airport. The museum was founded in 2002 by collectors Stanley Zimmerman and architect Earl Rubenstein, and is filled with special, and often historically…

The kings of the sandpit from the 1940s – and still there is nothing to rival them as the premiere sandpit toys: Fun Ho! toys. The story started in 1935, when Jack Underwood began making toys in the basement of his home as a hobby. In recent times, the Fun Ho! workshop has seen an increasing demand for reproduction Fun Ho! toys, which are cast at the museum, using the original moulding plates and boxes. In 1964, realising a gap existed in the domestic market for small-size toy vehicles, Fun Ho! plugged it with its Midget range. That was 60 years ago, when tight import restrictions allowed only infrequent imports of Matchbox toys into New Zealand. Underwood Engineering in Inglewood, maker of the Fun Ho! brand, negotiated with Streamlux, an…

Finished in October 2022, this poster-posing Ford Cortina GT Mark II has received the full treatment at Wellington restoration specialist The Surgery. John Galvin and the team put hours of work into this nowpristine example of a very rare English classic. Launched in 1966, GT versions were fitted with the new cross-flow 1600cc engines shortly after the Mark II launch. GT versions received increased engine power, uprated front disc brakes, 13x7-inch wheels, and wider low-profile radial tyres. Rear-axle tramp bars were fitted to later production cars. The GT also came in a variety of interior trim colours, or black pleated vinyl with similar treatment for the door trims. There was a padded dash with a speedometer and a rev counter, and the raised centre dash top contained four gauges. It…

1 Josh Kelly went for a drive to the recent All Oz Car Show Timaru and recorded some very nice Aussies. 2 Despite the damp weather, great support from local Manawatū car clubs saw more than 300 cars turn up for the Rongotea Lions Club fundraiser. More than $11K was collected on the day for Arohanui Hospice. 3 Greg Elder often opens up his extensive display so that local car clubs can see the restorations done on the premises. 4 Gary Johnston’s 1985 Bathurst–winner tribute TWR Jaguar XKR. 5 Barry Leitch has built this Alan Mann–tribute Ford Lotus Cortina Mark I, now almost ready for racing.…

The 2024 Goodwood Revival, held over the weekend of 6–8 September, was a three-day festival of classic motor racing, entertainment into the wee small hours, and warbird flyovers between rain showers. Fluctuating damp track conditions made for some spectacular saves and some not-so-welcome shaves with barriers and safety walls but did nothing to dampen the spirits of the thousands who had travelled from all over the world to attend. REMEMBERING A DOUBLE WORLD CHAMPION On display were the cars and motorcycles raced by Surtees, who won the 500cc World Championship four times with MV Agusta. Fittingly, the subsequent 500cc world champion, a quietly emotional Giacomo Agostini (82), was on hand to ride Surtees’ MV Agusta 500cc four. bike I took over from John when I started racing 500cc for MV…

Back in 2005, Steve hatched a plan to one day own his dream Skyline: the legendary Hakosuka. Over the next 15 years, Steve bought and sold three different Skylines. The first was a 1998 Nissan Skyline GT, with two doors too many. It was replaced with a red GT-T of the same year but with the correct number of doors. Finally, in 2020, Steve found himself looking at a white 1999 GT-R sitting in his shed. “I was well down the path of getting to the dream of trading my way to owning a Hakosuka,” he says. READING THE MARKET In 2022, the GT-R market went absolutely wild, with some being sold at eye-watering prices, so Steve thought that the time was right to cash up and join the stupidity.…

Dear Editor In the March/April issue of New Zealand Classic Car [No. 392], I was intrigued to read the review of The Last Eye Witness, a richly illustrated book relating to a wonderful photographic collection of motor racing in Europe from 1902 to 1914. Described as the ‘Heroic Age’ of racing by the reviewer, Mark Holman, it is also his book of the year for 2023 – and justifiably so. The review inspired a rummage through the archives held by my father, Hugo Bedford, as I had a vague memory that there were photographs in his collection of similar cars in New Zealand. This has ultimately led to a whole new appreciation of the extraordinary pioneers of racing in New Zealand and [awareness of] the huge public enthusiasm for the…

At first glance, it’s hard not to see The Brokenwood Mysteries as a local version of the British series Inspector Morse, with Detective Inspector Mike Shepherd, his HG Holden Kingswood, and his passion for country music mimicking Chief Inspector Morse, his Mark 2 Jaguar, and his passion for classical music, respectively. Add to this the similarities with Midsomer Murders and a homicide rate disproportionate to that series’s low-key quaint English village backdrop, and the formula is there for one of the best murder mystery series around. These are not bad comparisons, as the success of the show around the world attests. As a fan of all three shows, and the previous owner of a 1971 HG Holden Kingswood – which I suspect came out of the same batch as Mike…

Aotearoa/New Zealand in the 1950s was a basic sort of place. Refinements were few and far between; homegrown culture was thin on the ground unless you were of Māori descent. The bastions of European society – if one could call it that – were the repressive social lore of the time. They were driven by the conservative religion, a legacy of Victorian England, the repressive aftermath of the war, a subversive drinking culture, and a sporting ethos dominated by the All Blacks rugby team. Apart from Ed Hillary’s triumphant 1953 assault on Mount Everest, the mantra of ‘rugby, racing, and beer’ seemed an apt slogan to describe life in these farflung isles. EMERGENCE OF INDIVIDUALISM While these pursuits were undoubtedly the aspirations of a large chunk of the populace, a…

Phil began planning his project about 12 years ago in his spare time, but a casual comment changed his focus. “My business partner Aaron and I were having a beer, and I was building a chassis. The dream was to build a ’34 Ford roadster,” he recalls. Then they saw a photograph of a rare 1957 Maserati 450S racing sports car. Around nine original cars were built and raced by notable drivers of the day, such as Stirling Moss and Carroll Shelby. “It really flipped it on its side,” Phil says. With access to the complete running gear from a late-model Maserati 3200GT obtained from a discontinued project, it was decided to build something special. WORKING THE METAL “I got the Maserati running gear from a 3200GT about 10 years…

In August 2024, Simeon Brown, the Minister of Transport, announced that, by 2027, all vehicles would be paying road user charges (RUCs). Electric vehicles (EVs) have recently started paying RUCs, and the government has “expressed concern” that, in order to pay properly for ‘better roads’, there has to be an alternative to the fuel tax. Minister Brown argued that, as modern vehicles were more fuel efficient, and older vehicles less so, the owners of the less fuel-efficient vehicles paid more than their fair share. I’m having difficulty finding any logical way in which our classics will be assessed for RUCs! There’s an assumption that all vehicles have a working odometer! At present, this is not a warrant of fitness (WOF) requirement. Some argue that the mileage can be checked at…

Held over one day at Timaru International Motor Raceway (formerly Levels Raceway), the annual Brooklands Challenge Trophy Meeting is the season opener for classic racing in the south. It combines classic car racing with separate races for classic motorcycles. Some entrants partake in both forms of motor sport. Brilliant conditions ushered in spring for a great day’s motor racing on 31 August. The event is run to a specific points-scoring formula, and the Classic Action Motorcycle Sport (CAMS) team of Gary Cotterell (Manx-Norton), Noel Jackson (Harley-Davidson Sportster), and Neville Wills (Manx-Norton) were the winners. The motorcycle team retrieved the trophy from the Classic Motor Racing Club (CMRC), which has held it for some time. Coordinator Paul Coghill congratulated the CAMS team on a deserved trophy win: “Well done, team! Winning…

“It’s crazy, just crazy!” said Chevrolet Corvette chief engineer Tadge Juechter. He was referring to the prodigious horsepower output of the amazing LT7 V8, at 1064 brake horsepower (bhp; 793kW), 7000rpm, and a tugboat-pulling 828 pound-feet (lb·ft; 1123Nm) of torque high up the range at 6000rpm. When Juechter started the project for this car, he had 300bhp (224kW) to play with. The original Corvette of 1953 chugged along with 150bhp (112kW), so that is progress. This is a stunning-looking car, with an estimated top speed in excess of 215mph (346kph). It should be a contender for higher placings at Le Mans than achieved in 2024 – but it did finish the more than 4000km event! The 2025 car is a long way down the development road from the 1963 cars…

It is unlikely that most of us will ever see a Trekka – unless it is in a museum. However, if you live in Blenheim, that may not be the case. This particular example is owned by Noel Collins of Blenheim, and it is his daily driver. In the co-pilot’s seat sits Noel’s dog, Shaggy, who takes his role as co-pilot very seriously. Noel believes that he is the truck’s second owner. The first, he believes, was a Blenheim farmer, and Noel bought it off his son. This vehicle is the second Trekka that Noel has owned, his first one being a station wagon that he owned in the ’70s. He fondly remembers his daughter taking it out for a drive and bringing it back in a different shape from…

In a previous life, this old Morris truck used to haul export-quality apples from orchard to wharf; now, it hauls exotic racing cars from the Rush Family Collection in Feilding to racetracks around New Zealand. At any historic race meeting around the country, at any given time of the year, you are likely to bump into at least one member of the Rush family, with one of the family’s spectacular historic race cars in tow. The Rush Family Collection in Manawatū is home to a plethora of vehicles of all makes and models, but it’s the Formula 5000 (F5000) or Can-Am single-seaters that steal the show, whether parked up in the family museum or hard on the brakes into a hairpin. PERIOD CORRECT Having such important historical race cars turning…

Melissa left Auckland for Christchurch three years ago. She and her bagged 1959 Chevrolet Parkwood station wagon have fitted in nicely with the cruising car club scene there. Melissa has a long-held passion for cars. Now 17 years since she entered the industry as an apprentice mechanic, she can sort out gremlins in anything from an old-school car to modern techno-wizardry. The move to Christchurch was the right one, she says. “I love it; the people are so friendly down here. I’ve found they are more willing to help me here too.” GIRLS ’N’ GASOLINE Melissa is keen to share her knowledge with other women and has formed Girls ’N’ Gasoline, a series of workshops for just eight women at each session learning about the basic maintenance of their cars.…

The moment I slipped, key in hand, behind the driver’s seat of this American motor sport icon, I knew that I was in for a memorable day. Sliding the key into the solidly built ignition lock and making a positive turn clockwise awakened the fuel pump, which clicked rhythmically but menacingly. A further turn clockwise and the starter motor engaged. It was like a devil’s war cry had erupted. The whole neighbourhood knew that something had awoken, and it was something wild, mean, and menacing. RARE AND AWE-INSPIRING SIGHT Three split-window Corvettes are a rare sight in their homeland of the US, but they are a momentous sight in little ol’ New Zealand. Three years ago, I acquired a Daytona Blue 1963 split-window Corvette. It was love at first sight,…

I happened to be at Los Angeles International Airport a couple of Saturdays ago, and couldn’t wait to get past Customs and out into the fresh air. I had a few hours to kill before going on to my ultimate destination, so I popped over to the Zimmerman, where I discovered, to my delight, that there was an all-British car meet in the museum car park. That was a treat in itself, because the US was a major market for British autos after World War II, and many of them were high-end examples.…

Fixing fibreglass damage is a specialised art, and I had only a vague idea how to go about it until recently. Then, Tom Horvath – my good friend and co-author of our book Pro Paint & Body, published by HP Books in the States – got a ’78 Corvette 25th Anniversary Edition with a fractured front mudguard in his shop. Horvath has produced his share of Pebble Beach contenders, including priceless Panteras, Rolls-Royces, and Ferraris. However, he got his start years ago working for a Corvette restorer, so he knows those cars inside and out. Tom says that the only way to fix a broken ’Vette guard is to remove it and replace it, because patches will shrink and look awful in a very short time. Luckily, the basic task…

The Inglewood Rotary Charity Classic Car Show, now a beloved annual event, has been a highlight of the Inglewood community since 1994. This muchanticipated show brings together car enthusiasts from near and far, showcasing an incredible variety of classic vehicles. From hot rods to custom cars, stationary engines, and military transport, the event celebrates automotive history and passion. To date, the show has raised an impressive $80,741 for charitable causes, with only one cancellation due to COVID-19 and one rain-affected show over its long history. A DAY OF FUN AND BARBECUES On average, the show draws around 300 entrants, with peak years boasting up to 450 vehicles on display. It’s not just a car show—it’s a community event that unites people. Visitors enjoy a day of fun, with Rotarians providing…

The array was largely the fruit of a lifetime of collecting by the late Pukerau farmer Robin Dickson and his wife Susan, and the sale attracted wide interest from New Zealand and overseas. That strong interest provided some interesting results, with the top price of $85K being for a 1902 Rambler, going to its new owner Chris Stephens of Christchurch. Gore Vintage Car Club (VCC) members turned out in force to support the auction and help set it up. With no reserve on anything, all the cars were sold. Auction organiser Paul Herron was very pleased with the results: “It wasn’t too bad. There were a few steals. Apart from that, I’m quite happy with the result.” Paul said the telephone bids from overseas came from buyers for parts only,…

Barry Leitch has almost completed his stunning 1965 Lotus Cortina Mark I Alan Mann tribute car. A member of the Historic and Vintage Racing Association (HVRA), Barry has built the car as per the FIA homologation papers for the car to be accepted into the HVRA. The car is based on those that raced in the period, and it has a Schedule CR Certificate of Description (COD). This will be a stunning-looking car on the track in the distinctive Alan Mann livery. The Cortina is fitted with aluminium panels as per the homologation for those cars, and both carry upholstery and polycarbonate windows. The cars accepted for the HVRA are representative of the period, with the correct liveries, wheels, tyres, and trim. The HVRA is a diverse group that includes…