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Targaception: Targa announce two-day rally-within-a-rally for 2015 grand final

9 August, 2015

Organizers have revealed that the final event of the 2015 Targa New Zealand season will now include an additional two-day 14-stage meeting to be completed within the main event, titled the Targa NZ Regional Rally. It will start alongside the main 1000km Targa New Zealand event on October 20 — the second-to-last day of the six-day marathon — with both groups of competitors set to finish in Palmerston North on October 31.

The additional two-day meeting helps complement the already arduous 1000km-long Targa New Zealand rally, which The Motorhood profiled in July.

Event organizer Peter Martin has stated that the new two-day event will cater towards more casual drivers, or others wanting to sample Targa New Zealand before committing to the full six-day rally.

“People are busy, and many tell me that while they’d love to do our event, they simply do not have the time to do the full six-days … [the two-day meeting] gives people either new to motorsport, or new to Targa a chance to dip a toe in the water to see if a Targa event is for them,” Martin explains.

With the full six-day Targa event starting in Auckland on October 26, the two-day Regional Rally event will tag onto the main event for leg four and leg five, comprising of 14 stages in total. The two-day event covers off some of the more memorable stages in the Targa line-up, including Te Aute and Gentle Annie road stages.

More than 50 cars have already signed up for the full Targa New Zealand meeting, no doubt with many more to follow suit after this announcement. Make sure to keep tabs on The Motorhood for more coverage of the historic event!

Almost mythical pony

25 July, 2024

The Shelby came to our shores in 2003. It went from the original New Zealand owner to an owner in Auckland. Malcolm just happened to be in the right place with the right amount of money in 2018 and a deal was done. Since then, plenty of people have tried to buy it off him. The odometer reads 92,300 miles. From the condition of the car that seems to be correct and only the first time around.
Malcolm’s car is an automatic. It has the 1966 dashboard, the back seat, the rear quarter windows and the scoops funnelling air to the rear brakes.
He even has the original bill of sale from October 1965 in California.

Becoming fond of Fords part two – happy times with Escorts

17 July, 2024

In part one of this Ford-flavoured trip down memory lane I recalled a sad and instructive episode when I learned my shortcomings as a car tuner, something that tainted my appreciation of Mk2 Ford Escort vans in particular. Prior to that I had a couple of other Ford entanglements of slightly more redeeming merit. There were two Mk1 Escorts I had got my hands on: a 1972 1300 XL belonging to my father and a later, end-of-line, English-assembled 1974 1100, which my partner and I bought from Panmure Motors Ford in Auckland in 1980. Both those cars were the high water mark of my relationship with the Ford Motor Co. I liked the Mk1 Escorts. They were nice, nippy, small cars, particularly the 1300, which handled really well, and had a very precise gearbox for the time.
Images of Jim Richards in the Carney Racing Williment-built Twin Cam Escort and Paul Fahey in the Alan Mann–built Escort FVA often loomed in my imagination when I was driving these Mk1 Escorts — not that I was under any illusion of comparable driving skills, but they had to be having just as much fun as I was steering the basic versions of these projectiles.