Update: all good things take time

27 April, 2015

Back a few weeks we gave you a look into what the upholstery in one of Parkside Media’s senior management team’s Triumph TR6 looked like (see here). Well now we can give you an update on the progress so far …

We couldn’t believe our eyes as the TR6 rolled into the Parkside headquarter’s car park. 

After fifteen years, gone was the crusty, moth-eaten, and exposed sponge, rubber, seat cushions, that poked precariously through equally torn and shabby vinyl seat coverings. The snug cockpit was now adorned with  brand-new black seat upholstery, in perfect contrast to the British Racing green exterior, ready for the next phase in this iconic sports car’s life.

What’s next we hear you ask? We reckon a paint job might be on the cards, but it may take a while … we’ll keep you posted. 

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.