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:   


A second dose of Dash

When the car arrived in Wellington in December 2018 it was duly taken along for entry certification. Vehicle Inspection NZ (VINZ) found some wrongly wired lamps and switches — not too bad — but, much more significantly, some poor welding repairs. As the structural problems were probed more thoroughly, we realized the previous owner’s restoration would not do and we needed an upgrade. Dash had made it into the country but it would take some time and money before he would be free to explore any of New Zealand’s scenic highways.
We took the car to our new home in Johnsonville in the northern suburbs of Wellington and I pored over the car in detail to figure out what was next. There were lots of new parts on the car and a very perky reconditioned drivetrain but the chassis needed serious work.

Lunch with… Jim Palmer

In the 1960s, Hamilton’s Jim Palmer won the prestigious ‘Gold Star’ four times and was the first resident New Zealander home in the New Zealand Grand Prix on five consecutive occasions. He shared the podium with Stirling Moss, Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, Denny Hulme, Jackie Stewart, and Chris Amon. The extent of his domination of the open-wheeler scene in New Zealand will probably never be matched or exceeded. Yet he’s always been modest about his achievements.