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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.
 

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.”