1,000,000 Facebook fans! Thanks, from NZV8

23 February, 2015

Well, it’s happened — NZV8’s hit one of those great modern-day milestones, and have cracked 1,000,000 Facebook likes.

We didn’t ever think that we’d get that kind of audience when we started the page in 2009, but the million fans bring to us a fan base that stretches across the globe. We’re now getting the local V8 scene recognition not just here in New Zealand, but in countries as diverse as Australia, North America, Brazil, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Morocco, Hungary, and Algeria.

Locally, our biggest local following comes from Auckland. Second place is taken by Christchurch — our thanks to the Cantabrians for flying the NZV8 flag outside of Auckland. Of course, we wouldn’t be where we are without the support we have from all over New Zealand — our thanks to everyone.

Thanks to Repco, we’re celebrating by giving away some great prizes to six fans. The first prize, which will go to one reader is a 143-piece toolkit.

Five runner ups will receive an 80-piece toolkit. All you need to do to go in the draw to win is tell us in the form below where our second biggest following within New Zealand is from. We’re grateful to our fans from across the globe for their support, but we’re only able to send the prize to a New Zealand address.

Take a trip down memory lane by checking out a few of our favourite Facebook posts we’ve put together over the years in the gallery below:

This competition is now closed

1975 Suzuki RE5

Suzuki had high hopes for its RE5 Wankel-engined bike launched in 1975. It had started looking at the Wankel engine in the mid-60s and bought the licence to the concept in 1970.
Apparently all of the big four Japanese makers experimented with the design, Yamaha even showing a rotary-engined bike at a motor show in 1972. But Suzuki was the only one of the big four to go into production. Like many others at the time, Suzuki believed that the light, compact, free-revving Wankel design would consign piston engines — with their complex, multiple, whirring valves and pistons, which (can you believe it?) had to reverse direction all the time — to history.

Westside story

For the young Dave Blyth, the Sandman was always the coolest car and he finally got one when he was 50. “I have always had a rule. When you turn 50, you buy or can afford to buy the car you lusted after when you were 20. I was 20 in 1979 and the HZ Sandman came out in 1978. It was the coolest of the cool — I just wanted one,” he says. “Back then a Sandman cost $4500 new and a house was worth about $20,000. I made about $30 a week so it was an impossible dream then.”
Dave was heavily influenced by the panel van culture of the time. “I started with an Escort panel van and upgraded to a Holden HD panel van with a 186ci six cylinder. I started a van club, Avon City Vans.