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Super Black Racing ready to take on V8 Supercars

21 January, 2015

Super Black Racing — the only New Zealand-based V8 Supercars team — has teamed up with Prodrive Racing Australia (PRA) heading into the 2015 V8 Supercars Championship, with the team’s debut at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide, held between February 26 and March 1, 2015.

Following their successful debut at last year’s Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000, with support from PRA, the decision to continue with PRA’s technical support and services was a no-brainer.

The Wellsford-based team has recently signed 19-year-old Andre Heimgartner to race their PRA Ford Falcon in the 2015 season. At 19, he is one of the youngest ever drivers to race in V8 Supercars.

“I just can’t wait to start racing! The team at PRA are amazing to work with and I’m sure I’ll soak up a lot of information from them, which will be a huge help for us,” he said of the opportunity.  

Australian fans, as well as PRA, have displayed positive reactions towards Super Black Racing. Team owner Tony Lentino says, “We have been blown away from the amount of support we’ve received from all around the world, including our Australian fans … although we are convinced that the friendly New Zealand/Australia banter will be greater than ever.”

To highlight just how serious they are, Super Black Racing has also enlisted the support of legendary racing star Paul Radisich as team principal. Radisich has extensive experience behind the wheel, including winning the Touring Car World Cup in 1993 and 1994.

“I know my V8 experience can and will be put to the best use,” he says of being team principal.

With a New Zealand team to get behind, the 2015 V8 Supercars season is already set to be a good one, and it hasn’t even started.

Design accord

28 March, 2025

You can’t get much more of an art deco car than a Cord — so much so that new owners, Paul McCarthy and his wife, Sarah Selwood, went ahead and took their Beverly 812 to Napier’s Art Deco Festival this year, even though the festival itself had been cancelled.
“We took delivery of the vehicle 12 days before heading off to Napier. We still drove it all around at the festival,” says Paul.
The utterly distinctive chrome grille wrapping around the Cord’s famous coffin-shaped nose, and the pure, clean lines of the front wing wheel arches, thanks to its retractable headlamps, are the essence of deco. This model, the Beverly, has the finishing touch of the bustle boot that is missing from the Westchester saloon.

Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

21 March, 2025

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.