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Bay of Plenty Vintage Car Club Annual Car Show and Swap Meet

8 December, 2015

Held on Sunday, November 8 at the Bay of Plenty Vintage Car Club’s Cliff Road HQ, overlooking the upper reaches of Tauranga Harbour, this annual show has now become a popular fixture with the local classic car scene.

With around 70 classic motorbikes, cars, and trucks on show, plus an interesting swap meet, all surrounded by local rose gardens, this is one event visitors to the region should definitely add to their diary.

With the sight and sound of classic vehicles, the smell and the beauty of the roses, the taste of sweet and savoury in the tearoom — the show’s organizers once again should be well satisfied with their efforts, and if asked they would be able to say that everything had come up roses.

You can see a gallery of the event below:

For a full event report, pick up a copy of the January 2016 edition of New Zealand Classic Car magazine from Monday, December 14.

Almost mythical pony

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

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.