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Lexus LFA Code X class victor at Nurburgring 24 Hours

19 May, 2015

The penultimate modern-day hypercar, the Lexus LFA, has proven itself on the world’s most arduous track — the Lexus LFA Code X took a class victory at the Nurburgring 24 Hours over the weekend of May 16–17, finishing 18 laps ahead of its nearest rival.

The LFA Code X is a 5.3-litre V8-powered version of Lexus’s flagship model, and managed 147 laps of the Nurburgring in the 24-hour period, winning the SP-Pro class. The crew — comprising of Masahiki Kageyama, Hiroaki Ishiura, Kazuya Oshima, and Takuto Iguchi — finished 14th overall.

The Lexus’s success could have been twofold, with a Lexus IS-F finishing runner-up in the SP8 class, only one lap behind the class winner.

And in the SP3T class, a two-litre turbo Lexus RC placed fourth after completing 122 laps, the same number as the class’s second- and third-placed vehicles.

This year’s victory marks Lexus’s sixth class victory since 2012 in the Nurburgring 24 Hours race.

Design accord

28 March, 2025

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

21 March, 2025

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.