SUBSCRIBE TO THE
MAGAZINE NOW
Facebook-f Instagram
Search
Close this search box.

Mike Lowe’s trusty steed heads into retirement

10 November, 2014

 


After finishing 20 years' of Targa, Mike Lowe's Fiat Abarth will be retired to the New Zealand National Motorsport Museum

After finishing 20 years’ of Targa, Mike Lowe’s Fiat Abarth will be retired to the New Zealand National Motorsport Museum

All racers have to hang their helmets up some day, and Mike Lowe has announced that that day has come for his trusty steed. After participating in, and finishing, every Targa event for the last 20 years in his 1964 Fiat Abarth, Mike has decided to retire the iconic vehicle — it will be relocated to its new home in the New Zealand National Motorsport Museum.

According to Mike, “the time is right … she was telling us something when the clutch failed just three corners from the end of the last stage.”   

Mike kicked off the inaugural 1995 Targa with co-driver Steve Cannon, seeded 22nd following the prologue stage at Pukekohe Park Raceway. As an indication of the little Abarth’s performance, it was clocked at 142kph on the circuit’s back straight — barely any slower than a Dino 246 GT.

The Targa debut would be marked by a high-speed crash after hitting a puddle of oil at around 160kph, putting the Abarth in no condition to continue. However, the car was repaired to drivability, and completed the event. These on-the-fly repairs would become a staple of Mike and his team’s Targa involvement, with every event requiring impromptu repairs of varying intensity, from broken axles, oil leaks, a blown head gasket, through to full-on crashes. As Mike has said, “We came, we broke, we repaired, and we finished!”

 

1975 Suzuki RE5

1 November, 2024

Suzuki had high hopes for its RE5 Wankel-engined bike launched in 1975. It had started looking at the Wankel engine in the mid-60s and bought the licence to the concept in 1970.
Apparently all of the big four Japanese makers experimented with the design, Yamaha even showing a rotary-engined bike at a motor show in 1972. But Suzuki was the only one of the big four to go into production. Like many others at the time, Suzuki believed that the light, compact, free-revving Wankel design would consign piston engines — with their complex, multiple, whirring valves and pistons, which (can you believe it?) had to reverse direction all the time — to history.

Westside story

25 October, 2024

For the young Dave Blyth, the Sandman was always the coolest car and he finally got one when he was 50. “I have always had a rule. When you turn 50, you buy or can afford to buy the car you lusted after when you were 20. I was 20 in 1979 and the HZ Sandman came out in 1978. It was the coolest of the cool — I just wanted one,” he says. “Back then a Sandman cost $4500 new and a house was worth about $20,000. I made about $30 a week so it was an impossible dream then.”
Dave was heavily influenced by the panel van culture of the time. “I started with an Escort panel van and upgraded to a Holden HD panel van with a 186ci six cylinder. I started a van club, Avon City Vans.