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Be sure to grab an edition of New Zealand Classic Car Issue No. 296

18 August, 2015

The August issue of New Zealand Classic Car (Issue No. 296) is now on sale!

We take a close look at a the final iteration of the original Monaro — Holden’s HZ Monaro GTS. This iconic Aussie muscle car marked the end of an era, after which Holden put the Monaro nameplate into hibernation for two decades.

Cars don’t come more British than the iconic Daimler 2.5-litre V8. The winning recipe of shapely Jaguar Mk2 bodyshell and Edward Turner’s refined V8 engine proved to be a real winner.

Japanese classics are becoming more and more collectable amongst enthusiasts every year, and none more so than cars like our featured rotary-powered Mazda RX-3 Coupe. This pristine example has managed to survive more than four decades without becoming heavily modified. It is a truly outstanding car.  

Read all about a discovered, almost-forgotten barn find. This Bugatti Type 57 was part of the much-publicized Baillon collection, and is now in New Zealand. The owners have rather ambitious plans to bring this historic vehicle back to its former glory.

Additionally, there are eight pages full of nationwide news, and don’t forget to take advantage of this month’s subscription offer.            

The butterfly effect

18 June, 2026

The man on the mountain bike pedalled over, taking it all in. Gazing in wonderment at this small Japanese coupe with butterfly doors, he said, “Wow, I have never seen one of these before. What is it?” When I told him it was a Toyota, he nearly fell off his bike.
The Toyota Sera is unique amongst ’90s Japanese coupes. The Sera, which is Italian for ‘evening’, can trace its roots back to Toyota’s AXV-II concept car. Launched as part of a trio of Toyota concept cars at the 1987 Tokyo Motor Show, it shared its underpinnings with the P70 Toyota Starlet. The similarities ended there, thanks to the AXV-II’s low-slung and rounded coupe styling with butterfly doors. These doors were held upright by gas struts when fully open. Glass covered the upper section of the doors and the rear hatchback.
These features, much to everyone’s surprise, were carried over to the production Sera in 1990. Toyota marketed the Sera, which means ‘will be’ in Spanish and ‘princess’ in Hebrew, as a funky alternative to the much-loved MR2.

Racing Mazdas

12 June, 2026

Both Rod Millen and Ron Kendall were rotary racing kings, emanating from the North Shore of Auckland, where I grew up. And the ultimate rotary techno guru was Bill Shiells, who developed the engine into a rocket ship while working out of Gulf Mazda in Takapuna from 1969, and later in his own business, Rotorsport. He began to extract some phenomenal horsepower from the enigmatic rotary engine. Bill was one of the first to race the Mazda RX-2 Coupe in 1971 and achieved immediate success, causing others to sit up and take notice, particularly the North Shore’s racing elite. They included Robbie Francevic, Rod Millen, Ron Kendall, John Woolf, John Le Feuvre, and Rex Findlay.