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Porsche nail 17th Le Mans victory

15 June, 2015

Following the spectacle that was the 24 Hours of Le Mans over June 13–14, the Porsche team has come out on top once again — the marque’s 17th victory at the event. What makes this event even more special is the fact that some of New Zealand’s very own racing talent helped to make it happen.

Kiwi Earl Bamber, along with Nico Hülkenberg and Nick Tandy, raced the Porsche 919 Hybrid to take the title exactly 45 years to the day after Porsche’s first victory at La Sarthe.

Kiwi young-gun Brendon Hartley also enjoyed a podium finish, along with teammates Timo Bernhard and Mark Webber, rounding off Porsche’s 1–2 podium effort.

We’ll have coverage of Le Mans in our upcoming issue of New Zealand Classic Car, so keep an eye out.

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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.