Weekly Motor Fix: Daimler Dart and E-Type Jaguar built five days apart

3 February, 2015

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“Every week we’ll bring you The Motorhood’s Weekly Motor Fix. This week, the New Zealand Classic Car team bring you a double feature with two cars they’ve discovered during the week that they think are something special”

We recently discovered these two beautifully restored classics that have just arrived in the country. The owner, a long-term kiwi expat (31 years away in the UK and Middle East), has just returned home to New Zealand from Dubai in the UAE. He cleared his 1961 Daimler Dart and 1961 E-Type Jaguar through Customs just in time for Christmas Eve; the same day he arrived back in Auckland for Christmas.

The Dart is a New Zealand new car built by Jaguar Cars Radcliffe factory on May 2, 1961 and supplied by Oxton Motors in Grafton. The current owner bought the car in February 1976 at the tender age of 19 because he could not afford an E-Type Jaguar. He fully rebuilt the car on a student budget with the help of a few friends whilst studying architecture at Auckland University. He sold the Dart in December 1979 to buy his first family home in 1979, thinking his ‘darting’ days were over.

However 20 years later — almost to the day — in December 1999, he purchased the very same Dart back from a friend who had owned it for 18 years. After five years of ownership, it was leaking much more oil than it burned and to prevent further deterioration he had it shipped to Dubai in 2004 where he had been working since 1993. After four years the Dart was ready and was entered in Dubai’s annual Classic Car Festival for five years running, with great enjoyment at the rarity value the car attracts in a place like Dubai.

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In 2008, having got the Dart under his belt as it were, his thirst for an early E-Type returned with a vengeance, and after reaching the conclusion that life is not a rehearsal, he decided to really scour the planet for a suitable car, travelling to the USA, Belgium, and finally Scotland where he found a suitable car. The 1961 E-Type was amazingly original but very tired, and as it turned out was built just five days before his Daimler Dart saw the light of day. The car was still in its correct factory cream paint colour but had the wrong black interior. After another four years of restoration work in Dubai, that included soda blasting the amazingly rust-free shell back to the bare metal, and a trip for the car back to the UK to have the correct Jaguar red interior and double-duck soft-top installed, the car is ready for its first competitive outing.

Keep an eye out for a full magazine feature in New Zealand Classic Car soon, and you’ll be able to see them at Ellerslie Intermarque Concours d’Elegance on February 8 at Ellerslie Racecourse.

Almost mythical pony

25 July, 2024

The Shelby came to our shores in 2003. It went from the original New Zealand owner to an owner in Auckland. Malcolm just happened to be in the right place with the right amount of money in 2018 and a deal was done. Since then, plenty of people have tried to buy it off him. The odometer reads 92,300 miles. From the condition of the car that seems to be correct and only the first time around.
Malcolm’s car is an automatic. It has the 1966 dashboard, the back seat, the rear quarter windows and the scoops funnelling air to the rear brakes.
He even has the original bill of sale from October 1965 in California.

Becoming fond of Fords part two – happy times with Escorts

17 July, 2024

In part one of this Ford-flavoured trip down memory lane I recalled a sad and instructive episode when I learned my shortcomings as a car tuner, something that tainted my appreciation of Mk2 Ford Escort vans in particular. Prior to that I had a couple of other Ford entanglements of slightly more redeeming merit. There were two Mk1 Escorts I had got my hands on: a 1972 1300 XL belonging to my father and a later, end-of-line, English-assembled 1974 1100, which my partner and I bought from Panmure Motors Ford in Auckland in 1980. Both those cars were the high water mark of my relationship with the Ford Motor Co. I liked the Mk1 Escorts. They were nice, nippy, small cars, particularly the 1300, which handled really well, and had a very precise gearbox for the time.
Images of Jim Richards in the Carney Racing Williment-built Twin Cam Escort and Paul Fahey in the Alan Mann–built Escort FVA often loomed in my imagination when I was driving these Mk1 Escorts — not that I was under any illusion of comparable driving skills, but they had to be having just as much fun as I was steering the basic versions of these projectiles.