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Quirky and classic cars cruise for charity

31 January, 2015

A convoy of classic cars and quirky vehicles will wind its way around the North Island from March 6–14, 2015, as part of the 25th Trillian Variety Bash, a rally to raise funds for Kiwi kids via Variety — the Children’s Charity.

The Bash has raised nearly $8 million since its inception, which has gone towards helping kids who are going through a rough time look forward to a brighter future. The event will see teams, accompanied by a swathe of local celebrities, travel from the Taranaki to Ohakea via Wanganui, and on to Waiouru, before heading South towards Wellington, with a pause at Parliament. From there, the convoy will travel to Napier, Taupo, Rotorua, Tauranga, and then head into Auckland via Cambridge. The procession begins on March 6 in New Plymouth, winding up in Auckland on March 14, for a grand celebration at MOTAT.

Silverdale’s Kaeleb Dovey tries out the Liberty Swing which Bashers donated to his Silverdale School

Each participating team pledges thousands of dollars of fundraising to the cause, as well as collecting along the way, and every ‘Basher’ (as they’re known) believes in the charity’s core values — helping New Zealand children, whether it’s via a specialized laptop for a blind, deaf, or autistic child, sports kit for the financially disadvantaged, or books and equipment for rural schools.

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.