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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.

The butterfly effect

18 June, 2026

The man on the mountain bike pedalled over, taking it all in. Gazing in wonderment at this small Japanese coupe with butterfly doors, he said, “Wow, I have never seen one of these before. What is it?” When I told him it was a Toyota, he nearly fell off his bike.
The Toyota Sera is unique amongst ’90s Japanese coupes. The Sera, which is Italian for ‘evening’, can trace its roots back to Toyota’s AXV-II concept car. Launched as part of a trio of Toyota concept cars at the 1987 Tokyo Motor Show, it shared its underpinnings with the P70 Toyota Starlet. The similarities ended there, thanks to the AXV-II’s low-slung and rounded coupe styling with butterfly doors. These doors were held upright by gas struts when fully open. Glass covered the upper section of the doors and the rear hatchback.
These features, much to everyone’s surprise, were carried over to the production Sera in 1990. Toyota marketed the Sera, which means ‘will be’ in Spanish and ‘princess’ in Hebrew, as a funky alternative to the much-loved MR2.

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.