Indholdsfortegnelse for No 192 May 2021 i NZV8

From a very early age, cars were something I couldn’t escape. My Uncle Andrew, a hot rodder, always had something on the go — that guy was my hero whether he knew it or not. I’m guessing my mum did though, because, for my fifth birthday, I didn’t get a clown, a magician, or even a bouncy castle; no, she organised for my uncle to come and take me and all my mates for a blast up the road in his hot rod of the time — a Ford Pop — the same car I’d go to watch him race on occasion at the Port Road Drags in Whangarei. It was also in his shed that I saw my first blown motor later in life — oh, what a sight!…

The development phase of the next-generation Nascar, dubbed ‘Gen-7’, is now complete as testing continues with Goodyear to develop a suitable tyre ahead of the 2022 season. Similar to what we’re seeing in Supercars, the biggest driving factors in the change have been to cut the ever-growing cost of the sport and to attract new manufacturers to join Ford, GM, and Toyota on the grid. The chassis design is a huge departure from the traditional Nascar chassis that saw teams design their own. The Gen-7 is a spec item constructed using a carbon-fibre tub and chromoly chassis, which each manufacturer’s body type will be a flange fit to — similar to the Supercars Car of the Future (COTF). The chassis will, for the first time, run independent rear suspension (IRS)…

The orange shirts worn by the hardworking volunteers at Meremere Dragway are now a thing of the past, as a new — blue — sponsor has joined the fray. NAPA Auto Parts, a well-known global organisation and sponsor of various drag racing enterprises is now the name behind the facility. While the NAPA Auto Parts name has a longstanding reputation abroad, the New Zealand arm was established in 2020 from the amalgamation of long-established local trade suppliers Ashdown-Ingram, Appco, Autostop, Bindons, Extreme, and Sulco. There are now NAPA Auto Parts stores operating on local soil and a strong expansion plan is in place for this year. While the local businesses that have made up Napa in New Zealand have been strong supporters of grassroots racing, Napa Auto Parts has a…

It’s the smallest big car show you’ll find on these shores. In fact, the actual show itself is shoehorned into the pit area of Avondale’s kart track, an area of no more than 100x10m. It’s been that way since 2008, although the show itself existed long before that, and despite the consequent show that happens in the surrounding carpark, growing and growing, the core of the show stayed the same. Traditional hot rods, great brands, and period race cars is the formula that organisers the Scroungers have stuck to, and each year they curate the show to best represent what traditional hot rodding is about in New Zealand. These guys are largely credited with being the first to be building these types of cars in New Zealand, and the show…

It’s said they breed them tough on the East Coast, and Jason Higgins sure tends to live up to that reputation. Though he’s a professional firefighter by day, the reality is he’s a jack of all trades, and as talented as he is, he’s determined to see things through to completion. He wasn’t always riding around in fire trucks, though, and heading straight into the automotive refinishing trade after leaving school placed him in good stead for classic car ownership. Yet, despite this, and the passion for restorations he’s always held, it was not until recently that he has completed a full restoration of his own. What makes that somewhat remarkable is the fact that he’s owned around 100 different cars over the years, most of those during his younger…

CMC RACER AND NZV8 FEATURED SHED OWNER I built a shed a few years ago to house a few cars and to put a hoist in, as I hadn’t had one before. Hoists are pretty cheap these days, so why wouldn’t you get one? As soon as the shed was finished and the hoist had been installed, I found that the shed wasn’t big enough any more, so we ended up extending it. Hoists are pretty big and ultimately take up a lot more room than just one bay of the shed, so you lose quite a bit of room; I hadn’t factored that in. However, having a hoist was a life-changer, and I’d be stuck without one now. You do need to allow for the floor slab to be…

NZV8: Thanks for your time today, Malcolm. Can we start by looking at how you got into this business. Was it your passion for cars, or was owning your own panel shop always your dream? Malcolm: Not at all. My first passion was rugby, and while I was growing up that was always my first love, but cars became a close second thanks to the influence of Dad and my brothers — Steven, in particular, who was an apprentice panel beater with Bardsley and Williams. We played with cars for a while before I ended up in Ireland with rugby. It was while I was away that Bob Dalley from the local rugby club asked me to come home to play, which I agreed to. But for me to do…

Long before Dan was hammering the strip, he was hitting the streets of the 03 in street machines. Although the Camaro is 100 per cent a streeter, it’s a monster — and, let’s face it, it isn’t going to be the best choice for a Sunday drive unless you really want to get some demerit points. So, having something a little more street friendly in the shed is something that Dan plans to sort out sooner or later. It’s clearly something that he has put a fair amount of thought into, as there was very little hesitation before he laid down the blueprint for the build. He would start with a ’56 Bel Air Sport Coupe, which would be sat down over a custom Art Morrison GT Sports chassis equipped…

The famed Hot Wheels Legends Tour, which is a global search for the next Hot Wheels Legend to be immortalised as a 1:64 Hot Wheels die-cast model, is set to make its way down under for the first time ever, hitting both New Zealand and Australia with tour stops. Each stop will be live-streamed, with ‘Mad Mike’ Whiddett, Tarydown Kelly, Scott Taylor of Street Machine, and Hot Wheels designers Tyler Charest and Phil Riehlman forming the local judging panel. There will be one winner from each stop, who will then go on to the global semi-final live-stream events. The event will culminate with a grand finale in November. The tour now spans all five continents and 14 countries, and is the perfect opportunity for us to showcase our unique car…

How cool is Brendon Shearing’s Monaro? The 509ci twin-turbo–powered machine isn’t just one of the best-looking cars in the country but also holds the title of second-quickest street car. That’s a title that has recently been pushed further out of the reach of other racers, too, when Brendon and crew had a great weekend at Masterton motorplex. Running low eights off the trailer on the first day of the Auckland Invasion, the Riverton-based crew showed they weren’t mucking around. Come Sunday morning, though, the results of the tuning work and CO2 boost controller installation proved worthwhile when the car clocked an impressive 7.84 at 185.84mph. The run was a great jump up on the previous personal best of 7.95 at 173mph, although the 1.415-second 60-foot time showed there is still…

20X11-INCH BUDNIKS WRAPPED IN 315S TO BE EXACT If you attended Beach Hop in late 2020, then chances are you would have seen Brett Marsh clocking up the first miles on his recently finished ’56 F100. Well, let’s face it, how could you have missed that metre-deep candy gloss of the day-glow DNA Blue Sapphire paint work. Beach Hop marked the maiden roadie in the truck that had been two years in the making and ended up twice the original budget, thanks to plenty of self-inflicted deviations to the build plan. Originally, Brett hadn’t actually wanted to build a truck; he had hoped to purchase one outright that was already built and use it as a work truck. As he puts it, “I had an epiphany that I needed a…

Having a cool car and needing a shed is almost a chicken and egg situation. There’s no point in having a car if you have nowhere to store it, but, until you’ve got somewhere to store it, you can’t buy a car. For many, it’s a tough life decision to make: buy a car and have nowhere to work on it, or build a shed and have no money to buy a car to put in it. However, where there’s a will, there’s a way — hopefully — so we thought we’d catch up with a handful of experienced shed owners to pick their brains about what to look out for and consider when building a shed of your own. SOLID FOUNDATIONS There’s almost no way to talk about shed…

There’s something quite awesome happening in the Napa Central Muscle Cars (CMC) right now — although this is said with a genuine mixture of sadness and joy. You see, the championship run for all three of the CMC groups is not as it has been for the past year or so with regard to a handful of regular ‘big names’ being the usual major points grabbers. In fact, there is an extra little bit of spice in the mix for the 2021 season — because, after four rounds, the top three spots in Group 1A are held by teams from the South Island. This isn’t to say that it’s something unique relating to southern ability; it’s purely that it’s such a mammoth task to travel north for every round. The…

A lot of us have been fortunate in our lives to have been given our introduction to the sport of drag racing through either family, friends, or on the pages of magazines such as the one you’re reading now. A select few have had the opportunity to compete and feel the emotional thrill ride that the sport provides, the excitement it generates, and the camaraderie that exists within its ranks. From the entry level to the highest level, the butterflies in the stomach are the same, the anticipation and anxiousness the same — until the car fires, that is, and then a calm feeling you can’t explain takes over, and before you know it you’re back in the pits ready to strap in and do it all again. It’s a…

Built almost entirely by his own hands, young car builder Jadin Coleman’s AU Falcon ute project is almost unrecognisable from the hard-worked AU he started with. Once completed, it will be a wide, low, and very loud summer cruiser. Jadin has carried out extensive bodywork, including a facelift to a BA Falcon front end that required a donor BA sedan to be liberated of all sheet metal from the B pillars forward, including the rad support. He also found a BA Boss bonnet scoop that has been raised 100mm to accommodate the twin wastegates that shoot skyward. Not pictured: the GT-style front bar and FPV rear bar are yet to be added. To fit the wildly large Japanese 19x11 and 19x13 Weds Cerberus wheels, the diff has been shortened a…

Who wants to win a limited-edition Mustang — while also helping out a great cause? Shelby New Zealand has built a very special Shelby GT-H, which will be raffled off as a fundraiser for the Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust. The GT-H (Heritage) features all the GT upgrades, as well as Shelby’s performance suspension package, forged 20-inch matte gold alloys, brake ducting, redesigned front aero, and that black-and-gold paint scheme. Raffle tickets are on sale from 19 March and will be available through selected Ford dealers, Shelby New Zealand, and at the likes of Beach Hop 2021. Tickets are limited to 6000 — or 5999 after we grab ours.…

The 2021 Shelby line-up has been unveiled in Las Vegas, and, for the first time, a speedster has been added to the range alongside the Shelby GT, Shelby GT500 SE, and the fastback Super Snake. Only 98 of each of the four models will be available, to celebrate 98 years since Carroll Shelby was born. Both Super Snake variants are offered with an 825hp supercharged five-litre, painted stripes, a widebody package, Penske track suspension, and rear seat delete with harness bar. The Speedster Edition features a unique convertible tonneau that converts the car into a roadster unlike anything you see on the road today. The base model Shelby GT starts at US$132,995 and is designed for personalisation over and above the Shelby fitted package, with options such as a supercharger…

AS TOUGH AS A TH400 CAN COME There is much debate about what makes a true street car among drag racers. It’s a hotly debated topic both in the pits and on … err, social media. To make matters worse, what’s considered a streeter in one country is completely illegal in another, so that only fuels the fire. Way back in 2014, we tried to draw a line in the sand, and created a list with a black-and-white set of rules for Kiwi racers to adhere to. While the Father’s Day Drags has become the premier yearly street car event, our Quickest Streeters list we print each month has created a whole new goal for many Kiwi racers who would prefer not to go down the full-blown competition car route,…

When Bronson Dunne imported an HT Monaro drag car previously raced by Murry Orme in the early 2000s, he never expected to be ripping it to bits before hitting the track. A lot has changed in race car technology in 20-plus years, and Bronson’s well and truly up to the play, so he knew the ancient Australian engineering wouldn’t cut it. The aim was to play in Wild Bunch, although he’s never really been one who’s keen on just being there to make up the numbers, so the rolling shell was destined for a BAE Hemi. As happens, things somehow got out of hand, and a few cuts here and there to get that fat Hemi fitting soon resulted in a major overhaul. All the tube work from the gearbox…

While we often talk about racing getting into your blood and unwittingly signing you up to a lifetime of motorsport, truth be told it’s actually cars in general that can just get under your skin. It’s the reason you’ll stop mid sentence to catch a glimpse of that chrome bumper backing from a car park down the road, or you’ll double round the block just to take another look what that guy was polishing in his shed — it’s really a hard thing to shake once petrol is in your veins. For Katrina Felton, cars have always been her passion, and where she prefers to spend her money, as she puts it. In her younger years, it was racing Speedway in A-grade and production saloons, and even a little dabble…

GM Powerglide, Turbo-Hydramatic 350s and 400s, Ford C4s and C6s, Chrysler TorqueFlite, Tremecs, Toploaders, and T5s — the gearbox, or transmission, is something that is somewhat the unsung hero of your driveline. It typically gets the least love, and, ironically, it’s also the part that can make or break the performance of a combination. Perhaps it’s the complexity of the automatic, the mind-bending science behind correct converter selection, or the simplicity of the driveshaft, but we all tend to never give it a second thought until something goes wrong. Upgraded power plants are great, but have you put into enough thought into selection and modifications to handle that power? TORQUE CONVERTERS In a manual gearbox, you’ll have a clutch, but in an automatic it’s the job of the torque converter…

NZV8: Hi, Michelle — that’s a really tidy-looking Chev Nova; what year and model is it? Michelle: It’s a 1962 Nova II two-door hardtop (pillarless). Have you had it long? Eleven years and counting. Did you buy it here in New Zealand or import it? It was imported from Washington state. My ex-partner bought it off some friends in a little town called Spanaway about 40km south of Seattle. I had some anxiety when it was being shipped from America, as there were some really rough seas with some ships losing containers; luckily the Nova container wasn’t one of them! What made you go with a Nova? I was actually looking for ’50s pickup, as I’ve wanted one since I was a little girl. I had looked at a bunch…