Cruisin’ for Canteen

11 October, 2016

You’ve really gotta admire the folks that go out of their way for charities, and especially the large organizations that can make big things happen, changing the lives of an unquantifiable number of deserving people. Saturday, October 29 will be one of those days, with the Meguiar’s Car Crazy Charity Cruise supported by Big Boys Toys and Smits Group in support of Canteen. 

The cruise will host a wide range of vehicles, and will attendees will be provided gift packs and a unique told-on-the-day cruise route, finally ending up at Big Boys Toys. 

Upon arrival, those involved in the cruise will take part in a VIP lap through the live-action arena, right before parking up in a VIP area created just for the cruise. For those interested in taking part in the charity cruise, your car must be presented at a very high level, including customs, classics, hot rods, imports, and street machines — as this is a show after al!

What’s also a really cool aspect of the cruise is that Meguiar’s is donating 50 cents for every vote submitted in the People’s Choice Award competition, as well as donating the entry fees to Canteen. 

If you’re interested in entering your car into the charity cruise and supporting an amazing cause, click here. Entries cost $45 per car. 

Design accord

You can’t get much more of an art deco car than a Cord — so much so that new owners, Paul McCarthy and his wife, Sarah Selwood, went ahead and took their Beverly 812 to Napier’s Art Deco Festival this year, even though the festival itself had been cancelled.
“We took delivery of the vehicle 12 days before heading off to Napier. We still drove it all around at the festival,” says Paul.
The utterly distinctive chrome grille wrapping around the Cord’s famous coffin-shaped nose, and the pure, clean lines of the front wing wheel arches, thanks to its retractable headlamps, are the essence of deco. This model, the Beverly, has the finishing touch of the bustle boot that is missing from the Westchester saloon.

Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.