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Three-day North Island Targa: Day one

16 June, 2014

 


Photo : Fast Company / Ben Hughes

Subaru-driver Leigh Hopper and co-driver Simon Kirkpatrick headed the field after the first day of competition in this year’s three-day Targa North Island event.

The Orewa pair won three of the day’s six completed stages and take a 28 second lead in both categories over Auckland Mitsubishi Evo pair Jason Gill and Mark Robinson, with Patumahoe’s Glenn Inkster and his co-driver Spencer Winn a further 43 seconds back in their Mitsubishi Evo.

Last year’s Targa New Zealand event winners Martin Dippie and Jona Grant from Dunedin dominated the Modern 2WD category, topping the time sheets in all six stages to take a minute-and-a-half advantage over fellow Porsche pair Richard Krogh and Glenn Sharratt into the second day of competition on the Coromandel Peninsula and into the Waikato tomorrow.

Husband and wife Ross and Carmel Graham (Holden Torana A9X V8) caused an upset, meanwhile, in the Metalman Classic 2WD class by turning the tables on long-time class pace-setters, Barry Kirk-Burnnand and Dave O’Carroll (BMW M3), and Barry’s son Carl and his co-driver Sam Gordon (BMW 325i)

The Grahams claimed their first class scalp in the day’s first stage – Koheroa east of Pukekohe – and went on to top the class time sheets in three of the other stages and equal the time set by the winners of a fourth, another husband and wife pairing, Tony and Jo Butler in their Holden-based Cheetah V8.

Targa newcomers Ian Power and Shamus Kay had a good start to their day, setting the third quickest Metalman Classic 2WD time through the first stage in their BMW 320i only to overshoot a corner at the end of the second stage and end up in a ditch, where they were joined a few minutes later by the Nissan Skyline of Greg and Jackson Fowles.

1986 Pontiac Firebird

9 October, 2025

Seeing the car with his own eyes already had Scott fizzing, but when the curator of the car let Scott sit in the driver’s seat it became a truly unforgettable day. There was no way Bo and Duke’s orange stunt jumper could compete with this. To top it off, a photograph of him sitting in the car turned up in the local paper, so he started a new school with an added aura as the kid in the Knight Rider car.
Scott still thought about the Knight Rider car from time to time, but if he had not gone with his wife Abbey to the Selwyn Motor Fest in 2018, it may have remained just a treasured memory. At the show, Abbey asked Scott what his favourite car was as they ambled round. The man she had married instantly connected with his nine-year-old self, but in a deeper voice he said, “KITT from Knight Rider”. Had she just said, “That’s nice dear,” and left it at that, life might have continued as normal. However, unaware of the hole she was about to start digging, she said that she had never heard of it.

Blueprinting basics

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You occasionally hear petrol heads tossing around the term ‘blueprinting’ when referring to an engine they have assembled, and have sometimes altered significantly. What they are probably trying to say is that their engine was carefully machined to optimum tolerances and balanced — probably for racing. But that isn’t what the term meant originally. You see, in the 1950s, when US stock car race cars really had to be stock, the racing teams would go to the factories and rummage through the parts bins until they found components that were closest in tolerance to the original blueprint developed by the engine’s designers.