Get your entire car club to Leadfoot Festival 2015

3 November, 2014

We’re fast approaching the Leadfoot Festival, held over February 6–8, 2015 at Leadfoot Ranch in Hahei, and you can get your car club invited to be a part of the spectacle by having an exclusive space in the new Classic & Vintage Club Area. The advantage of this is you get all your club cars in one spot, and every club car through the gate will receive two tickets to that night’s concert. The club’s exclusive area will be designed with special signage to designate each club’s affiliation, all for no added cost!

You can book your club for one, two, or all three days of the event, but space is extremely limited and it is anticipated to sell out quickly. Understandably, cars must be classic, vintage, or unique in nature, and each club must have a minimum of 10 cars to qualify. For more info, or for tickets, go to leadfootfestival.com.

Motorman – The saga of the Temple Buell Maseratis

Swiss-born Hans Tanner and American Temple Buell were apparently among the many overseas visitors who arrived in New Zealand for the Ardmore Grand Prix and Lady Wigram trophy in January 1959. Unlike Stirling Moss, Jack Brabham, Ron Flockhart, Harry Schell and Carroll Shelby who lined up for the sixth New Zealand Grand Prix that year, Tanner and Buell were not racing drivers but they were key players in international motor sport.
Neither the rotund and cheery Buell nor the multi-faceted Tanner were keen on being photographed and the word ‘apparently’ is used in the absence of hard evidence that Buell actually arrived in this country 64 years ago.

Luxury by design

How do you define luxury? To some it is being blinded with all manner of technological wizardry, from massaging heated seats to being able to activate everything with your voice, be it the driver’s side window or the next track on Spotify. To others, the most exorbitant price tag will dictate how luxurious a car is.
For me, true automotive luxury comes from being transported in unparalleled comfort, refinement, and smoothness of power under complete control. Forget millions of technological toys; if one can be transported here and there without the sensation of moving at all, that is luxury — something that is perfectly encapsulated by the original Lexus LS400. It was the first truly global luxury car from Toyota, and one that made the big luxury brands take notice.