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V8 SuperTourers and NZV8 Touring Cars — merge or be banned

16 June, 2014

 


BNT V8 SuperTourers 2014 series champion, Greg Murphy, being handed his trophy by MotorSport New Zealand President Shayne Harris.
Photo credit: Andrew Bright

An unusual email was received by bosses of New Zealand’s premier racing categories, V8 Super Tourers and NZV8 Touring Cars, suggesting a unanimous decision had been reached that V8 SuperTourers, NZV8TC TLX and TL should come together and compete as one race otherwise find the categories banned from race tracks New Zealand wide. 

The email was sent by Shayne Harris, MotorSport New Zealand’s (MSNZ) president, on Thursday, May 22 after attending the Circuit Owners Group meeting at the Motorsport Annual General Conference. MSNZ and track owners meet at this AGM.

V8 SuperTourers CEO Ray Noonan was shocked to believe that, as suggested in the email, circuit owners had unanimously decided that the categories should merge as a single V8 race otherwise there wouldn’t be a track available to compete.

However, the response back from track owners suggests this isn’t the case with several track owners already denouncing the email and saying it didn’t correctly represent what had been discussed and decided at the AGM.

Noonan said many of the track owners had been in contact with V8 SuperTourers to confirm existing contracts are still valid with many seeking multi-year deals.  

“The tracks are mostly private businesses which are not under the control of MSNZ,” says Noonan. “The MSNZ executive needs to understand that its role is governance, and should get out of trying to operate as a promoter and controlling the actions of people that have invested their own money.

“MSNZ’s feeble attempt to try to ban us from tracks is laughable,” says Noonan. “They have become irrelevant to us all, and are desperately trying to prove that they still have some power. The MSNZ circuit commission, of which Shayne Harris is the leader by virtue of being president of MSNZ, absolutely passed a resolution to ban us from all tracks in New Zealand.”

The stoush is the latest chapter in an ongoing saga that started back in 2011 when, in the absence of any leadership or planning from MSNZ, the new V8 SuperTourer category emerged and went on to quickly dominate the V8 landscape in New Zealand.  The split away from the then tier one NZV8 category by most of its teams and drivers to join V8ST ignited what has been reported as a ‘war’ between the two parties. Noonan is adamant there is no war.

“The ongoing belief, held by a small, uninformed, but vocal minority, that there is an ongoing ‘war’ between V8 categories is simply nonsense,” says Noonan.

“Before the MSNZ meeting even occurred, NZV8TC and V8ST had already agreed on calendar cooperation, in the absence of any leadership from MSNZ, going back many years — we simply got on with it.

“MSNZ have simply become irrelevant to the sport at tier one level. There are many V8 categories in New Zealand, including V8ST, TLX, TL, Central Muscle Cars, Formula 5000, and so forth. They all have their own strengths but are fundamentally different. V8ST is about controlled cost parity highlighting the emergence of drivers, but with limited engineering difference, TLX has a significant focus on engineering and design which we genuinely respect. For anyone to suggest that any category should abandon its core reason to exist is arrogant and simply unfair. All car owners, and in the case of SuperTourers, the category itself, are privately owned. It is inappropriate for anybody to try to dictate to owners how they should spend their money.”

Noonan thanked circuits that quickly confirmed their support for V8 SuperTourers and stated for the record that the sporting philosophies of NZV8 Touring Cars and V8 SuperTourers are completely different, and that V8ST will not entertain NZV8s running in the same races, nor would having muscle cars, GT1s, nor F5000 in the same race be considered.  However, V8ST’s position for well over a year has been that all categories are welcome at its meetings.

V8 SuperTourers resume competition from 27 September 2014 with the start of a new seven round season, beginning at Taupo’s Motorsport Park.

2014/2015 BNT V8 SUPERTOURERS CALENDAR

ENDURANCE ROUNDS (Endurance portion of Championship)

ROUND ONE:     September 27/28             Taupo 400

ROUND TWO:    November 1/2 Waikato 400 – Hampton Downs

ROUND THREE:                 November 28/29/30       Fuchs 500, Pukekohe

 

SPRINT ROUNDS (Sprint portion of Championship)

ROUND FOUR: TBA        Either Pukekohe or Manfeild

ROUND FIVE:     March 7-8 2015                 TIMARU 250, Levels Raceway

ROUND SIX:        March 21-22       CHRISTCHURCH 250, Mike Pero Motorsport Park

ROUND SEVEN:                 April 24-26           GRAND FINAL: PUKEKOHE, with V8 Supercars

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.”