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Weekly Motor Fix: the cars of Westside, part one

11 October, 2016

For the most part, TV and movie production companies don’t put much thought into the cars they use as far as period significance and any modern enhancements that may be on show. Think the Lamborghini Aventador poster in a shot in Dallas Buyers Club, which was set in the 1980s, or a DeLorean with a dubbed V8 noise (or perhaps even a DeLorean capable of hitting 88mph).

A certain exception to this is the Kiwi TV programme Westside, which aired on TV3. With a little help from our mates at NZV8, the production team put a lot of effort into ensuring the cars used by Ted West and his team were those that the fictional crime family would actually have been cruising in way back when.

The first car we’re featuring in our series on the cars of Westside is this perfect HZ Sandman, complete with logos for Ted West’s ‘legitimate’ locksmith business. Enjoy!

Dave Blyth
1978 Holden HZ Sandman

“When I was a kid, the Holden Sandmans were the coolest cars around,” Dave Blyth remembers. 

Dave started off with the essential Escort panel vans, but a Sandman always seemed like a distant fantasy. The fact that he now owns one is definitely a big life goal crossed off the list. The opportunity to own his dream car arose around seven years ago, and Dave jumped at it. 
The Sandman had been restored in the ’90s, so it was in pretty good nick, and all the problem rust areas had been well taken care of. But the decals were fading, it was on the wrong wheels, and the engine bay contained far too many chrome dress-up parts. 

Tidying the Sandman up has been an ongoing mission for Dave, who has sorted a full set of original Holden Rostyle alloys, tidied up the interior — note the aftermarket steering wheel, as Dave finds the original too big — refreshed the engine bay, and taken care of the bodywork, paint, and decals. 

“It’s a driver, not a show car,” Dave points out, and he’s never taken it off the road for any of work he’s done to it. After all, it’s a slippery slope down into the obsessive realms of full restoration, and he’s got a genuine Falcon XA GT for that. 

The Sandman runs an original Holden 308 V8, with M21 four-speed manual gearbox and a Salisbury 10-bolt diff. Inside, the Sandman-spec GTS interior is all there, in very well maintained condition. The party area has been reupholstered, too, with an integrated storage compartment, as well as ample space for a kip. Dave’s driven the old Holden up to Kumeu a few times, crashing in the back, and it does just fine at that. 

He was first approached by the producers for season one of Westside, but they only wanted the Sandman for some episodes, and Dave couldn’t justify the time or travelling required to bring the car to and from Auckland. So Ted West started off in the old Escort panel van, much as Dave did in real life, moving up in the world to bigger and better things in season two, where the Sandman is a permanent fixture in the show. It might have taken Ted West a season to graduate from an Esky to a big boy wagon, but at least Dave’s methods for acquiring his dream car were more legitimate.

Vehicle driven by: Ted West
Kingpin of the gang, husband to Rita and father to Wolf, Ted West is Outrageous Fortune’s Grandpa in his prime. A legendary safe cracker and principled career criminal, Ted’s tempestuous romance with Rita is set against the background of great social upheaval in 1970s and ’80s New Zealand.

Janspeed recreates the Jaguar sports car

29 September, 2026

Thankfully, a few of these cars made it to New Zealand, the odd one being imported from the UK over the years. However, the 1988 British Racing Green example owned by Bill Slater in Upper Hutt was originally sold as a standard car but converted using the full Janspeed kit by the first owner within a couple of years of buying it.
Bill has owned a few other Jaguars. In fact, after he sold his Jaguar XJ12 in 2018, he found himself pining for another and, when the XJ-S came up for sale, he could not resist it. Having just sold the V12, he was not expecting much from the six-cylinder car other than more reliability and it being cheaper to keep on the road. Naturally, he had heard of the influence Janspeed had on the marque, but it was not until he took the car for a test drive that he became aware of just how superior it was to the car he had just sold. The price of a second-hand Janspeed XJ-S and that of a standard 3.6 XJ-S is quite comparable, making the Janspeed version an incredible bargain, even more so in comparison with other performance classic cars — or even modern cars, for that matter — which cost far more bucks for the bang.

The writing on the wall

25 September, 2026

Deven, a digital content producer in his 20s, says it was the rear-drive Nissan and Toyota drift cars that fired his imagination in his not-so-distant youth and soon had him wanting one of his own. However, like most of us, he had to start in something less glamorous – in his case, a 1997 Mitsubishi Galant. After that, he bought a four-litre V8 1991 Toyota Soarer, a big change from the Mitsubishi.
“It was my daily driver, and it wasn’t that bad to run back when petrol was affordable,” he says.
When he got fed up with filling it up, Deven bought a 1989 Ford Laser sedan, a 1.3-litre five-speed manual, to be his daily driver. It’s in very good condition, bought from a careful older driver, and he still runs it – although he will occasionally also drive the latest in a series of Nissan Laurel sedans. His current one, from 1993, has done the lowest number of kilometres yet, at 183,000. It has the single-cam version of the engine in his Skyline.
“I’ve had four different versions of that car. It was just a car I always liked. It’s really comfortable, quite luxurious. I bought it from a 90-year-old in Hamilton. It’s in mint condition, and everything is standard.”