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Keen to get involved in October’s Meguiar’s Car Crazy Charity Cruise?

24 September, 2015

The Meguiar’s Car Crazy Charity Cruise is back for the second time in 2016 on October 31, with organizers teaming up with Big Boys Toys in support of the wonderful work undertaken by CanTeen around cancer awareness and support. The cruise will be held on the Saturday of the Big Boys Toys event, starting off with a 9am sign in at Smits Group / Meguiar’s headquarters at 59 Greenmount Drive, East Tamaki, where entrants will receive their gift packs, their cruise route, and their official cruise sticker.

The cars will be under way at 10am sharp, following a scenic route to Big Boys Toys (held at Auckland’s ASB Showgrounds, Greenlane), where entrants will perform a lap of the live action arena before parking their machines in the VIP car park for show goers to admire.

Registration for the Meguiar’s Car Crazy Charity Cruise costs $45 per car, with the Meguiar’s VIP entry pack including a selection of products, a further discount voucher for use at the Meguiar’s / Smits Group stand at Big Boys Toys, and, of course, entry to the show for everyone in your car. The Big Boys Toys team have come to the party here, and best of all your entire entry fee will be donated to CanTeen.

The Meguiar’s Car Crazy Charity Cruise is limited to well-presented vehicles only — including customs, classics, hot rods, imports, and street machines. Those who do enter will go in the draw to win a People’s Choice Award, worth $700 in cash, as well as many other prizes, so get your registration in quick to avoid missing out.

Organizers want to raise as much as they can for CanTeen, so in addition to the 100-per-cent donation of the entry fee, Smits Group / Meguiar’s will donate 50 cents for every legitimate vote in the Meguiar’s Car Crazy Charity Cruise Peoples’ Choice Award. Voting forms will be provided to every person entering the showgrounds via the event guide, plus spare copies will be available at the gate and at the Meguiar’s stand. The better your car is presented, the more votes placed, and the more dollars raised!

To join the charity cruise, get your car ‘show and shine’ ready and register for the Meguiar’s Car Crazy Charity Cruise at the Meguiar’s website. Good luck, and we’ll see you there!

Almost mythical pony

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

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.