Call for volunteers for the ITM500

8 April, 2015

Have you ever wanted to get involved behind the scenes at a race meeting? How about one of the biggest V8 race meetings of the year? Well here’s your chance — ITM500 is being held this November and they need around 450 volunteers to make the day a success.

The ITM500 takes place at Pukekohe Park Raceway on November 6–8 and will see several iconic Kiwi drivers make the trip home, including Shane Van Gisbergen, Fabian Coulthard, and Scott McLaughlin. Vital championship points are up for grabs along with the chance to battle some international drivers right here on the most iconic race circuit in New Zealand.

Deborah Day, the event volunteer coordinator, says, “Every year our volunteers have a ball. They embody the spirit of this iconic event and we’re looking forward to having a blast alongside our Supercar teams this year.”

Don’t worry if you feel that you don’t have the necessary skills to be a volunteer — every applicant will receive proper training prior to the event. Volunteers will also receive free entry and a volunteer pack, which is exclusively for the volunteer crew.

All new and returning ITM500 volunteers can register their interest now at themotorsportclub.com. Applications close July 31.

Image credit: Matthew Hansen

Design accord

You can’t get much more of an art deco car than a Cord — so much so that new owners, Paul McCarthy and his wife, Sarah Selwood, went ahead and took their Beverly 812 to Napier’s Art Deco Festival this year, even though the festival itself had been cancelled.
“We took delivery of the vehicle 12 days before heading off to Napier. We still drove it all around at the festival,” says Paul.
The utterly distinctive chrome grille wrapping around the Cord’s famous coffin-shaped nose, and the pure, clean lines of the front wing wheel arches, thanks to its retractable headlamps, are the essence of deco. This model, the Beverly, has the finishing touch of the bustle boot that is missing from the Westchester saloon.

Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.