Valentine’s Day beauty, plus much more in the latest New Zealand Classic Car magazine

10 February, 2016

The February issue of New Zealand Classic Car is now on sale. From classic American to stylish European, and the latest in British, there’s plenty of good reading for everyone.

Matching all the glitz and glamour of the Ellerslie Intermarque Concours and Classic Car Show, our featured Valentine’s Day–special 1958 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe is indeed a real heartbreaker.

An author and retired barrister, the owner of our featured Karmann Ghia is well qualified to write about the restoration qualities of his stylish German coupé — so we asked him to tell his own tale.

Jaguar takes on the Germans at their own game with the all-new XE. We get behind the wheel of the Sport version for a day and find out if this new model really is capable of putting the cat amongst the pigeons.

We count down to the Ellerslie Intermarque Concours and Classic Car Show, and there’s also our usual Nationwide News section, Behind the Garage Door, as well as Motor Man, Motorsport Flashback, plus much more.

Pick up a copy at your local supermarket, bookshop, or petrol station, or buy a print copy or digital copy below:   


To finish first, first, you must build a winner

Can-Am royalty
Only three M20s were built, including the car that was destroyed at Road Atlanta. This car was later rebuilt. All three cars were sold at the end of the 1972 season. One of the cars would score another Can-Am victory in 1974, driven by a privateer, but the M20’s day was done. Can-Am racing faded away at the end of that season and was replaced by Formula 5000.
These days the cars are valued in the millions. It was unlikely that I would ever have seen one in the flesh if it hadn’t been that one day my editor asked me if I would mind popping over to Taranaki and having a look at a pretty McLaren M20 that somebody had built in their shed.
That is how I came to be standing by the car owned and built by truck driver Leon Macdonald.

Lunch with … Roly Levis

Lunching was not allowed during Covid 19 Lockdowns so our correspondent recalled a lunch he had with legendary New Zealand racing driver Rollo Athol Levis shortly before he died on 1 October 2013 at the age of 88. Michael Clark caught up with Roly and members of his family over vegetable soup