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Kicking off the 2015 season with Targa NZ Rally Sprint

5 March, 2015

The 2015 Metalman Targa NZ Rally Sprint is fast approaching, taking place on Sunday, March 8 at Ardmore Airport. The season-opening, one-day sprint event in the South Auckland/Franklin area is now a key part of the Targa calendar, and provides a good warm up for May’s three-day Targa Bambina, held in the Coromandel and Bay of Plenty. The Targa Bambina is the second of the Targa calendar’s three events, the third of which is the six-day Targa New Zealand — this year running from Auckland to the lower North Island, in late October.

The opening Targa NZ Rally Sprint is a popular part of the Targa schedule, not only because it’s a great warm up for Targa regulars, but also provides the ideal opportunity for interested racers to try the Targa experience for themselves, and see what it’s all about.

“The roads are typical Targa roads, nice and twisty and not too fast or slow, and competitors have the option of competing against the clock to see who is the quickest, or using it as either a test-and-tuning day to dial in their cars and driver/co-driver combinations,” says Peter Martin, Targa NZ event director. For spectators, good viewing opportunities of the cars can be found at the event’s home base of Ardmore Airport, or off Creightons Road, Ardmore. The road closures on Monument Road and Ardmore Quarry Road take place from 9.30am with roads remaining closed until the end of the event at 3pm.
 

1975 Suzuki RE5

1 November, 2024

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

25 October, 2024

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.