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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:   




Buy a print copy of the magazine for NZ$10


Buy a digital copy of the magazine for NZ$6.99

Chrysler’s classy cruiser

22 May, 2026

I first saw our feature car, a 1970 V8-powered Regal 770 hardtop, towing a trailer carrying the tidy Ford Anglia classic racing saloon in Broadspeed racing colours that has featured in these pages. The coupe is comparatively rare here, which means anyone contemplating purchasing one of these big two-doors is sure to see prices continue to climb. The latter Charger has claimed much of the Aussie Chrysler limelight, but the simpler and classier lines of this car, which appeared dated soon after its introduction, now have a more timeless appeal.
Former owner, Balclutha motor engineer, Mike Verdoner, remembers the car well. He believes it came from Dunedin originally.
“I’m not sure about the car’s history, but I bought it off its owner at Kaitangata. Unusually, it was advertised in the local newspaper, the Clutha Leader, which was a surprise as these usually go for a lot more money on the internet. I had it for quite a few years. It needed a little bit of work to tidy it up, so I had to decide whether to spend the money on it to do it up, which could have been twenty grand. Its value at the time was not like it is now, so I sold it to Ewan. It’s probably now worth three or four times what I sold it for.”

The Pininfarina 230 SL

14 May, 2026

It’s October 1964, and imagine you’re an automotive journalist covering that year’s Paris Auto Show (Mondial de l’Automobile). As you approach the Pininfarina booth, you come across a car that looks a bit like the Mercedes-Benz 230 SL introduced the previous year at the Geneva Auto Show, a car then arriving at Mercedes-Benz dealerships around the world.
But looking closely, its styling and proportions seem to be a bit different. And it has a fixed roof, unlike the Pagoda-style greenhouse of the removable hardtop seen on the production 230 SL. While today, the styling of the W113, under the supervision of Head of Styling Friedrich Geiger, with lead designers Paul Bracq and Bela Barenyi, is considered a mid-century modern masterpiece, acceptance in-period was not universal. Some critics called out the concave design of its removable roof, which ultimately gave the car its “Pagoda” nickname.