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Inkster and Winn take out Targa South Island

3 November, 2014

Glenn Inkster and Spencer Winn win the 20th anniversary Targa South Island / Photo: Fast Company/ProShotz

After winning their class in a staggering 20 out of the 26 stages they competed in, Pukekohe pair Glenn Inkster and Spencer Winn have won this year’s Targa South Island Instra.com Allcomers 4WD. Having been trying to win the event for five years, crossing the finishing line in first place was more of a relief than anything else for Inkster.

“Monday and Tuesday seem such a long time ago now. And to be honest, we’ve been pretty tame and safe all event,” he said. 

Inkster said the slipping clutch he was dealing with in the morning of the final day had him worried. 

“But really it was a tiny problem and I think we were beating ourselves up for no reason. The guys did a great job all week in keeping the car going,” he said.

Martin Dippie and Jona Grant in their 2007 Porsche GT3 RS took out the Instra.com Modern 2WD class and were also the first resident South Island pair to cross the line. 

“We’re very pleased. The car has gone like a freight train — no issues at all,” Dippe said. “We did have one moment on the Crown Range today where we gave ourselves a wee fright, but that’s racing.”

In the Metalman Classic 2WD class Mark Kirk-Burnnand and Chris Kirk-Burnnand won in their 1987 BMW M3 taking out nine of the 26 stages with more than two and a half minutes to spare between themselves and Rob Ryan and Paul Burborough. 

This year’s 20th anniversary Targa South Island attracted more than 120 entries across the three competitive classes and nearly 80 entries into the Targa Tour. 

 

 

Janspeed recreates the Jaguar sports car

29 September, 2026

Thankfully, a few of these cars made it to New Zealand, the odd one being imported from the UK over the years. However, the 1988 British Racing Green example owned by Bill Slater in Upper Hutt was originally sold as a standard car but converted using the full Janspeed kit by the first owner within a couple of years of buying it.
Bill has owned a few other Jaguars. In fact, after he sold his Jaguar XJ12 in 2018, he found himself pining for another and, when the XJ-S came up for sale, he could not resist it. Having just sold the V12, he was not expecting much from the six-cylinder car other than more reliability and it being cheaper to keep on the road. Naturally, he had heard of the influence Janspeed had on the marque, but it was not until he took the car for a test drive that he became aware of just how superior it was to the car he had just sold. The price of a second-hand Janspeed XJ-S and that of a standard 3.6 XJ-S is quite comparable, making the Janspeed version an incredible bargain, even more so in comparison with other performance classic cars — or even modern cars, for that matter — which cost far more bucks for the bang.

The writing on the wall

25 September, 2026

Deven, a digital content producer in his 20s, says it was the rear-drive Nissan and Toyota drift cars that fired his imagination in his not-so-distant youth and soon had him wanting one of his own. However, like most of us, he had to start in something less glamorous – in his case, a 1997 Mitsubishi Galant. After that, he bought a four-litre V8 1991 Toyota Soarer, a big change from the Mitsubishi.
“It was my daily driver, and it wasn’t that bad to run back when petrol was affordable,” he says.
When he got fed up with filling it up, Deven bought a 1989 Ford Laser sedan, a 1.3-litre five-speed manual, to be his daily driver. It’s in very good condition, bought from a careful older driver, and he still runs it – although he will occasionally also drive the latest in a series of Nissan Laurel sedans. His current one, from 1993, has done the lowest number of kilometres yet, at 183,000. It has the single-cam version of the engine in his Skyline.
“I’ve had four different versions of that car. It was just a car I always liked. It’s really comfortable, quite luxurious. I bought it from a 90-year-old in Hamilton. It’s in mint condition, and everything is standard.”