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McMillin turns to nitro!

25 November, 2015

 

NZV8 columnist, and well-known drag racer, Morice McMillin has driven some fast cars during his drag racing career, but last Sunday the Hamilton-based driver had his first taste of nitro whilst completing licensing passes at Sydney Dragway, and, for him and his crew, the Aeroflow Triple Challenge can’t come soon enough.

When quizzed about how the ‘One Bad Kiwi’ nitro funny car compared to other cars he had raced, McMillin beamed with excitement. “Honestly, it’s like nothing I can compare at all, there’s just no comparison.
 
“If I had to put it into words – I suppose one is a bit of hail and one is a thunderstorm. It’s just the whole experience; the noise, the smell — the whole experience is just amazing!

“As soon as I sat in the car at the race shop, it just fit like a glove, everything was set up perfectly and it was just perfect for me.”
 
McMillin took his own crew with him so that they could also get to know the new car.
 
“For us, it’s a steep learning curve but the boys picked it up quickly under the guidance of Aaron Hambridge and the boys in the Aeroflow race shop — it was a great day.”

It was also the team’s first trip to Sydney Dragway, the venue for the massive December 12 event where the team are set to make their competition debut.
 
Morice added, “To race on a world-class facility is like nothing that you dream about. It will be great to see the huge field of funny cars all lined up in the staging lanes for the event.”
 
After the licensing, McMillin and his crew returned to the race shop to get the car ready for competition.

“We went back to the shop and serviced as much as we could today. Now we get the logistics in place for the event and make sure everything is good to go. Oh, and we will nervously wait,” he laughed.
 
But McMillin is not making the trip for enjoyment alone, he is looking for fast passes and win lights.

“Driving a funny car for Graeme Cowin was amazing, to run my first five is something you can’t put into words, but to race against the best in the business at the best funny car event you could imagine – we’ll that will be the dream come true!”

Janspeed recreates the Jaguar sports car

29 September, 2026

Thankfully, a few of these cars made it to New Zealand, the odd one being imported from the UK over the years. However, the 1988 British Racing Green example owned by Bill Slater in Upper Hutt was originally sold as a standard car but converted using the full Janspeed kit by the first owner within a couple of years of buying it.
Bill has owned a few other Jaguars. In fact, after he sold his Jaguar XJ12 in 2018, he found himself pining for another and, when the XJ-S came up for sale, he could not resist it. Having just sold the V12, he was not expecting much from the six-cylinder car other than more reliability and it being cheaper to keep on the road. Naturally, he had heard of the influence Janspeed had on the marque, but it was not until he took the car for a test drive that he became aware of just how superior it was to the car he had just sold. The price of a second-hand Janspeed XJ-S and that of a standard 3.6 XJ-S is quite comparable, making the Janspeed version an incredible bargain, even more so in comparison with other performance classic cars — or even modern cars, for that matter — which cost far more bucks for the bang.

The writing on the wall

25 September, 2026

Deven, a digital content producer in his 20s, says it was the rear-drive Nissan and Toyota drift cars that fired his imagination in his not-so-distant youth and soon had him wanting one of his own. However, like most of us, he had to start in something less glamorous – in his case, a 1997 Mitsubishi Galant. After that, he bought a four-litre V8 1991 Toyota Soarer, a big change from the Mitsubishi.
“It was my daily driver, and it wasn’t that bad to run back when petrol was affordable,” he says.
When he got fed up with filling it up, Deven bought a 1989 Ford Laser sedan, a 1.3-litre five-speed manual, to be his daily driver. It’s in very good condition, bought from a careful older driver, and he still runs it – although he will occasionally also drive the latest in a series of Nissan Laurel sedans. His current one, from 1993, has done the lowest number of kilometres yet, at 183,000. It has the single-cam version of the engine in his Skyline.
“I’ve had four different versions of that car. It was just a car I always liked. It’s really comfortable, quite luxurious. I bought it from a 90-year-old in Hamilton. It’s in mint condition, and everything is standard.”