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Targa New Zealand set to bring on one of the ‘big guns’ for 2015

13 October, 2015

 

Former V8 Supercar champion and Kiwi-racing great Greg Murphy will get his first taste of tarmac rallying when he fronts up for this year’s week-long Targa New Zealand event, which starts on Labour Day, Monday, October 26 in Auckland.

Murphy will be piloting the latest HSV Gen-F GTS, and part of his duties will include giving local dignitaries an insight into what it’s like to travel through selected special stages with an experienced race car driver. Murphy will also be offering ‘win a ride’ competition winners the same opportunity through closed special stages before the main competition field each day.

A second promo car will be driven by racing legend, and local motor-racing personality, ‘Racing Ray’ Williams, who will no doubt be providing passengers with an exhilarating experience.

The event finishes on Saturday, October 31 after 35 closed special stages comprising a total of 1035.5kms, linked by 1431.7kms of touring stages with overnight stops in Hamilton, New Plymouth (two nights), Palmerston North, and Havelock North before finishing back in Palmerston North (at The Square in the city).

For a full Targa programme and driver listing, be sure to check out the November issue of New Zealand Classic Car on sale October 19.

Racing Mazdas

12 June, 2026

Both Rod Millen and Ron Kendall were rotary racing kings, emanating from the North Shore of Auckland, where I grew up. And the ultimate rotary techno guru was Bill Shiells, who developed the engine into a rocket ship while working out of Gulf Mazda in Takapuna from 1969, and later in his own business, Rotorsport. He began to extract some phenomenal horsepower from the enigmatic rotary engine. Bill was one of the first to race the Mazda RX-2 Coupe in 1971 and achieved immediate success, causing others to sit up and take notice, particularly the North Shore’s racing elite. They included Robbie Francevic, Rod Millen, Ron Kendall, John Woolf, John Le Feuvre, and Rex Findlay.

Range Rover CSK — the original SUV

5 June, 2026

The Range Rover, thanks to Charles Spencer King, went into production in 1970 boasting an iconic shape that would last until 1996. The vehicle that would create the SUV moniker came about because Rover decided it was time to add a bigger four-wheel-drive vehicle, one with a 100-inch wheelbase, to the model range. Land Rover made a 109-inch wheelbase model but the standard vehicle had a 88-inch wheelbase.
The new model would be more suitable for road use than the existing Land Rover, which was considered to be predominantly for rural use. To make sure it could cope on any road it came standard with the Rover 3.5-litre V8 engine. The body design was originally sketched by King and went into production with only a few minor touch-ups by the Rover styling team.
According to King, “The idea was to combine the comfort and on-road ability of a Rover saloon with the off-road ability of a Land Rover. Nobody was doing it.”